How Canada can better track what happens to trafficked wildlife after they’re seized

In 2022, officers from the Canada Border Services Agency and Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) intercepted a package of live turtles from China that had been declared as children’s building blocks.

The package led to the seizure of 63 turtles and 58 turtle eggs , according to ECCC, from a man in Calgary who had been importing them to sell online.

The Calgary Zoo kept two of the turtles , while the rest were sent to a reptile sanctuary in Ontario.

The eggs were euthanized.

The fate of the animals beyond initial placements has not been publicly reported, and Canadian law does not oblige the government to report what happens to seized animals.

I am a wildlife conservation biologist specializing in the rehabilitation and reintroduction of formerly captive wild animals.

Wild animals are frequently abducted (often violently) from their natural habitat, squeezed into small containers and shipped around the world to become “exotic” pets, displays in roadside zoos or kept for breeding, causing immense suffering .

Trafficking is a profit-driven business that gives little regard to the ecological consequences of removing animals from their habitat or to the welfare of the captured animals.

Canada’s wildlife trade law lacks provisions regarding individual animal welfare, as well as transparency reporting what happens to animals after they are confiscated by authorities.

This is a gap that lawmakers must address to better protect animals.

International and Canadian regulations The legal international wildlife trade is governed by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) , an international agreement aiming to ensure “legal, sustainable and traceable” trade.

Canada is one of 185 parties to CITES.

The convention obliges member states to appropriately pass and enforce laws against trafficking.

The act controls which wildlife can be imported, exported or moved between provinces and who owns seized animals, referring to the animals largely in terms of ownership and as a “specimen.” In 1992, Canada enacted the Wild Animal and Plant Protection and Regulation of International and Interprovincial Trade Act (WAPPRIITA) ).