Amazon Animal Encounters Part 2: The Dark Side

Sadly, not all of my encounters with Amazon animals were positive. While in the Amazon basin, I also saw animals that had been illegally taken from the wild to live locally as pets or to be exported to other countries for pets, trophies, or to be used in traditional medicines. Unfortunately, the illegal wildlife trade is highly lucrative and is a serious threat to endangered and vulnerable species. And Amazon rainforest animals are among the most frequently trafficked.

The illegal wildlife trade has been estimated to be worth between $5 billion and $20 billion annually (since it is illegal, it is difficult to obtain accurate numbers). This makes the trade of living animals second only to the drug industry in illegal revenue generation. To make matters worse, the industry is growing quickly now that the internet makes buying and selling animals so much easier.

I’m not proud of the fact that the USA is the second largest importer of wildlife products (after China) and a major destination for the illegal pet trade. Birds, reptiles, marine turtles, corals, and many species of mammals are regularly seized by US customs in shipments coming from Africa, Asia, Central America, and South America. In one year alone, over 38,000 mammals, 365,000 birds, 2 million reptiles, 49 million amphibians, and 216 million fish were brought into the United States illegally.

These animals are smuggled across borders the same way illegal drugs are: in crates (with little ventilation,  food, or water) marked as something else to elude customs often with little regard for whether the animal lives or dies. Due to these conditions, nearly 80% of the birds and reptiles that are illegally smuggled die in transit. For those exotic pets that make it to their new "home," over 50% die before reaching the age of 2.

Government Poster in Peru About the Illegal Pet Trade

While this practice is illegal in Peru, authorities often look the other way. Parrots, snakes, and monkeys are common pets of villagers along the Amazon and the sale of these animals (and others) in open markets in the small towns on the river’s edge is frequent.  

In one village on the bank of the Amazon, I found myself in a restaurant that had purchased a number of animals to keep in cages in hopes of bringing in more business. (Unfortunately, I didn’t realize this fact until after we had entered, and after one bottle of water, I left the restaurant.) The living conditions of these animals were wretched and I have no idea what diet was provided to them. When I was asked to pay for the photos I took of the animals, I (and my travel companions) refused. I told the owners that I did not approve of the practice and was not going to support it. Unfortunately, as long as tourists choose to patronize establishments that are patronizing the illegal animal trade, the practice will continue.

On my boat on the Amazon, I met a number of people with baby animals (turtles, parrots, macaws, coatis, monkeys) they had captured and were taking to sell in larger cities. Some of the people were open and willing to talk about it, others were not and wouldn’t allow photographs of the animals they were traveling with.

One family had a baby coati (mammals in the raccoon family) that had been taken from his mother. If you’ve never seen a coati before, here’s one I saw in a park in Argentina:

The little baby on my boat was on a rope tied to a pole on the side of the boat.

For the most part, the family didn’t pay attention to him. In fact, at one point, he fell off of the side of the boat and was hanging off the side of the boat by the rope around his neck screaming. Fortunately, he was pulled back to safety before damage was done. I’m a huge animal lover and I and two Peruvians took a liking to him and spent much of our time trying to feed him and holding the poor little scared guy.

The monkeys, however, were the hardest for me to bear. There were two different monkeys on one boat, both only a few months old. And while primates are my favorite animals, and being around them, especially babies, is always a treat, knowing how they got here and the life they were facing was terrible.

The two monkeys on my boat were a capuchin and a squirrel monkey. Both are highly social animals and live in the wild in groups of 10-50. Baby monkeys stay with their mothers for the first few months and capturing them requires shooting the mother out of a tree (with the baby clinging to her back) and hoping the baby survives the fall.

While having the opportunity to hold a baby monkey was an amazing treat, knowing that he was heading to a life without others of his species, without the ability to run in the trees, and without any freedom to be a monkey, broke my heart. Although I'm smiling in these pictures, I would have traded the opportunity to hold these babies if they could have their life back with their families in the wild.

The baby monkeys and the coati were all being sold for less than $10. Other animals were killed to get these babies, and the quality of life for the babies as they grow up is likely not good, all for a profit of $10 or less. While part of me wanted to just buy them all and take them to a reserve, this wasn’t an option as it was only supporting this illegal industry and encouraging it to continue.

The best way to stop this from happening is to stop the market for these animals. My hope is that people will realize that there are differences between wild and domestic animals and will make educated pet choices with these differences in mind.

If you'd like more information on the illegal wildlife trade or would like to help, there are many organizations dedicated to the protection of these animals. 

I'm a fan of Humane Society International at http://www.hsi.org/.

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