Exotic Exploitation

How the U.S. Pet Trade Threatens Global Wildlife

A Center for Biological Diversity Report, December 2025

By Dianne DuBois, Sarah Uhlemann, and Tanya Sanerib

Executive Summary

The exotic pet trend is growing globally and setting off alarm bells among wildlife conservation experts. An exotic pet’s journey often starts with being captured in a remote jungle and ends in a U.S. household. The United States is one of the world’s biggest players in the exotic pet trade, and more than 30% of the animals it imports for the trade are sourced straight from wild populations.

Wildlife exploitation, including for the pet trade, is a major driver of the global extinction crisis. One million species are on track to face extinction in coming decades unless action is taken to address species loss. Addressing the United States’ role in the exotic pet trade must be a top priority to stem this crisis and protect biodiversity for future generations.

This report analyzes U.S. import and export data collected by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from 2016 to 2024 and provides a summary of the concerning threats that the pet trade poses to wildlife globally.

The Center’s analysis found that:

• The United States imports on average more than 90 million live amphibians, arachnids, birds, aquarium fish, mammals, and reptiles each year for the pet trade.

• More than 248 million animals were captured from the wild and imported into the United States to be kept as pets from 2016 to 2024. Many of these animals were sourced from the world’s biodiversity hotspots in Southeast Asia and South America.

• The United States is also a major exporter in the pet trade, sending more than 17 million live amphibians, arachnids, birds, aquarium fish, mammals, and reptiles out of the country each year on average. Many of those animals are imperiled U.S. species.

• Seven of the top 10 pet export species are turtles, among the most threatened groups of vertebrates and increasingly threatened by overexploitation and habitat loss.

The pet trade contributes to the extinction crisis in several ways beyond simply taking animals out of the wild. As described in this report, that market has led to the introduction of invasive species and the spread of diseases in many parts of the world.

The use of misleading labels in shipping documentation and advertisements can lead well-intentioned consumers to accidentally purchase animals that were taken out of the wild illegally. The best way to protect wildlife from the pet trade is to simply avoid buying exotic pets altogether.

Recommendations for Consumers

• Don’t buy exotic pets. Wild animals should stay in the wild. As a consumer, it’s difficult to ensure that your purchase isn’t contributing to species’ decline in the wild.
• Ask your representatives to introduce and promote policies that protect wildlife from overexploitation for the pet trade.
• Don’t watch or promote videos of exotic pets on social media. Viral videos help increase demand for species that are already threatened.
• If you still want an exotic pet, ensure the animal is sourced from a legal, reputable, captive-breeding facility and isn’t declining in the wild. Do your research by asking questions and checking the species’ status at iucnredlist.org. If the species has been identified as at risk of extinction, don’t buy it.
• Consider whether the pet you want is the right fit for you. Many exotic animals require specific and potentially challenging care, and some can be dangerous to humans and other pets in the household. Resist the urge to buy a pet because it’s trendy on social media or has been featured in a movie or TV show.

Recommendations for U.S. Policymakers

• Ban the import and export of wild-caught animals for the pet trade to reduce pressure on vulnerable species and their habitats.
• Implement a “positive list” for pet ownership. Only allow species to be kept as pets if scientific analyses show that trading them poses no risk to biodiversity, public health, or animal welfare.
• Provide adequate funding and training for effective enforcement of existing wildlife protections from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, the Endangered Species Act, and the Lacey Act.
• Improve tracking and transparency of wildlife trade. Ensure that all species in trade are identified to the species-level in the Law Enforcement Management Information System (LEMIS) database to enable accurate assessments of risks to wild populations.

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Check out our press releases to learn more about the Center's actions to fight the exotic pet trade.