https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/online-reptile-trade-is-a-free-for-all-that-threatens-thousands-of-species/

Cave geckos exemplify evolution at its most fantastic. Some have bloodred eyes and sport bright yellow bands down their dark body. Others are Popsicle blue or bear camouflagelike patterns of fiery orange and brown. Many species of these lizards are only found over a tiny range, such as a single limestone hill in China. More than a dozen are listed as threatened with extinction, some of them critically so, by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Yet partly because they are rare and imperiled, cave geckos are all the rage among reptile collectors. They are among the nearly 4,000 reptile species—including highly endangered ones—that are routinely traded online, according to a paper published on Tuesday in Nature Communications. Animals from 90 percent of those species, representing half of the individual reptiles traded on the Web, are captured from the wild, the authors found. And the majority of these species are not included in any international regulations meant to ensure their trade is sustainable. “At the moment, the status quo is that anything can be traded until you say it can’t,” says study co-author Alice Hughes, an ecologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “This leaves thousands of species vulnerable to extinction.”