Dragons are obviously a thing of fiction.
Found in fairy tales, folklore and some show I don't want to talk about. It still hurts.
But the idea of dragons didn't just come out of thin air. Like many mythical beasts, they were inspired by real life nature.
The documentary we're featuring today is about one of those myths inspiring animals; the Sungazer lizard,
also known as the Giant Dragon lizard, and by Its scientific name,
Smaug, Gigantic, yes, smaug like the dragon.
This amazingly beautiful lizard is disappearing quickly
because of the pet trade and people's desire to own a dragon of their own.
And the answer to saving the species may not be found out in the wild, but in a science lab, aided by the trusty pipette.
Make sure you stick around after the credits for a short q&a with the filmmaker.
Now from producer Shivan Parusnath. This is Saving Dragons.
The sungazer is a 20 million year old species of lizard found only in South Africa. Because of the
unique dragon like appearance, there is a high demand for the species as a pet around the world.
But there is a problem. The sungazer does not breed in captivity. And all the animals we see
in the trade worldwide come directly from our threatening South African populations. For a
species that is already experiencing population declines because of our land transformation,
our farms, cities and roads. poaching for the pet trade is the last thing that the species needs.
My name is Shivan Parusnath, and I'm doing my PhD in zoology at Wits University in South Africa.
I've been obsessed with dinosaurs and dragons from as early as I can remember.
And this lifelong obsession led me to study reptiles. And I've spent the last seven years
studying the sungazer. Over this time, I've seen an increase in the number of sungazers
being sold as pets on social media, and a decrease in the number of animals in the wild.
Recent studies have found that reptiles are the number one most traded group of
animals in the world, making up more than half of all trading animals worldwide.
And the sungazer is one of South Africa's most highly sought after species in the pet trade.
But without the species breeding in captivity, something was wrong. It was clear to me that I
was seeing some evidence of illegal activity. To learn more about the reptile trade, its history in
South Africa and the problems we face. I spoke to two of South Africa's top reptile experts.
Johan Morais is undoubtedly the name that comes to most South Africans minds
when it comes to reptiles. Johan has decades of experience dealing with reptile trade issues,
from his time as a policeman and honorary officer at the Natal Parks board
to his frequent consulting with nature conservation and poaching cases. [JOHAN MARAIS] Yes, I
started, you know, I started with snakes at a very young age about teens and
and I've never been in favor of the exploitation of reptiles specifically.
And I think my first real involvement was back in 1979. The trend in reptiles was really, really big
in the 60s and 70s, it was massive, and there was one major exporter was shipping out 2030 40,000
reptiles a month, just tons and tons. And by the time the reptiles got to the airport, a quarter of
more of that would be dead. And it didn't matter. Because they were bought for nothing. And they're
sold for next to nothing. And what they did in those days, they'd drop a half a dozen guys in
a hillside. And they would steep on that hill for the next four or five days with massive crowbars.
And they will rip the area apart and catch every single reptile they get. And we would look at
a mountain range and say to this collector, well let's take a drive there and let's see we can find
and he would say don't bother we've been there, we've done it. So in the past you
know it was skins going out at a-rand-a-skink that's that market is no longer in existence.
[SHIVAN] The reptile trade has boomed over the past few decades, with worldwide reptile fairs
showcasing the vast variety of animals for sale. Unfortunately, there are loopholes in the system
that are being used by people exploiting our wildlife for profit. Today, the market
is much more sophisticated and specialized. And of course, the money is far, far greater.
[JOHAN] I think smuggling well that's still going on it's becoming more and more difficult. There
are more parcels being x-rayed. And if again, if you think of this sort of money, you know,
a suitcase full of rare rare reptiles is probably worth two or three or 4 million Rand if you
have. So what if you have to pay a 50,000 Rand bribe? It's not big money. So what is happening
is there's more and more of this laundering where
people are there's a stamp permit that sounded by a doctor, veteran doctor, and the animals are
going out with permits, but they are not being captive bred. It's just a big con.
[SHIVAN] After talking to your Johan, it was clear that South Africans reptiles have long been exploited.
With a clear list of problems facing rare and threatened species, like the sungazer. I spoke
to Professor Graham Alexander to learn more about this worrying problem of reptile laundering.
Graham has been lecturing at Wits University for over 30 years,
and has supervised more than 30 postgraduate research projects on reptiles.
[ALEXANDER] So as with money laundering, when you launder something, you hide the source of where you derived
the money or in this particular instance, the reptiles. So with reptile laundering,
what happens is that people masquerade as, as captive breeders of reptiles, when in fact,
they're actually poaching reptiles and selling them into the pet trade. It's very easy to
to launder reptiles in South Africa, because effectively even if the legislation is there,
there is very little enforcement of that legislation. So it's very difficult to measure
where organisms come from, whether they have been wild caught whether they have been captive bred.
So there are several groups of Southern African reptiles that have got high demand
in the reptile trade. There's various types of snakes like the Small Adders,
the tortoises are also in demand. And there's various groups of lizards, especially the
[inaudible] lizards, and some of the geckos, which fetch very high prices internationally. [JOHAN] Girdled
lizards and then of course, the dwarf chameleons, some very, very popular,
some of them have extremely limited distributions. Yeah, once you get to the
to Europe, you go to Belgium, you go to Germany, you go to the Netherlands,
and the USA is a massive, massive, massive market. [SHIVAN] With demand for our
South African reptiles being this high. It seems like smugglers and launders will find
ways to get them out of the country, using the loopholes in our systems, and the inefficiency
and inadequacies of our local law enforcement to police these issues. But there are solutions.
[ALEXANDER] Okay, so the first thing we need to really change is our view of the importance of reptiles
in ecosystems and how important they are in conservation. We need to take reptiles seriously.
[JOHAN] For reptiles, there's no budget, there's nothing. So it's all just random,
accidental captures, it's ridiculous. [ALEXANDER] So although we have the legislation in South Africa to
to limit the effect of of laundering of reptiles, the laws aren't really enforced, we don't really
have the tools to ascertain whether a reptile that's sold has actually been captive bred.
And so what we are doing now is developing the genetic tools to do just that.
But we only have that available for few species. [JOHAN] So we need an action plan, we
need the authorities to take responsibility. We need to look at the genetics we need to impose
restrictions on these exports force keepers to have a genetic databank. It make them
prove to you that what they are exporting is captive bred put the onus on them.
[SHIVAN] An important part of my PhD research has been to develop these genetic markers for sungazers
so that we can do parentage tests and lizards that are to be exported for the pet trade. Since
we develop these markers, they have been used in cases to deny permits for the export of sungazers
from South Africa. And I'm happy to say that since 2015, no more sungazers have left the country
under the guise of being captive bred. The small victory fills me with a lot of hope. But there are
so many other species of reptiles that still need our help, and we have a long way to go to win this
battle. Working with people that are passionate about reptiles, conservation, and education,
we can make the changes in our country that are so desperately needed to save our dragons.
Thanks for watching Seeker Indie's screening of Saving Dragons. We hope with stories like these
about animals you may have never heard of that will inspire the change, we need to save them,
because we definitely need more dragons in the world.
Now we want to show you our q&a with producers Shivan Parusnath checking in on the status of the
sungazer lizard, and what is being done to help stop the very destructive wild pet trade.
I'm Shivan Parasnath. I'm a biologist and photographer and filmmaker from South Africa. I've
been doing research on the sun gazer for 10 years now, I started off when I was looking for master's
projects. It kind of what it was at the exact same time that I was looking to start a master's
degree in biology, the endangered wildlife trust, an organization here in South Africa,
was looking to have a conservation assessment done on the species, basically, to see how many
animals were left in the wild, how populations are doing, how they've changed over time.
My dad always has a camera from the time we were kids even now when I visited him.
There's always a camera around as cameras became more accessible to me.
I found them just to be a beautiful way to capture life into capture moments. And as I went on this
journey of researching the sungazer is it's such a beautiful animal but not a lot of great shots
of the species had existed. I think that as a scientist, especially you have many opportunities
to capture things a lot of people don't get the opportunity to. And that's why I think science
communication is such a beautiful thing because you can share stories and images with people
that are really just not accessible to someone in the general public. And it lets you firstly learn
more about the world. And secondly allows you to care about things maybe you didn't know existed.
There's a saying that the best camera you can have him as the one that's on you,
one of my favorite photographs that that I've taken was taken with an old Samsung Galaxy s3,
about seven, eight years ago. And of all the shots I've taken with, you know, very
fancy camera equipment ever since then, this was one of my favorite shots, and it was used in the
National Geographic magazine, it was on the back cover of our South African reptile Atlas.
What we've got planned now is the formation of the first sort of reptile working group in
South Africa that actually aims to focus just on reptile trade issues with South African reptiles.
So the aim for the next, I would say, five to 10 years is to kind of get this up and running,
to do non detriment findings to have species listed on site so they can be afforded better
protection. The idea is to have this multi step approach. Of course, we want to continue with the
scientific research to be able to use genetics. So it's just kind of taking everything we've learned
over the past 10 years and applying it to many other species besides just the sun gazer. You know,
my dream is that one day in a few years time, poachers will say, Well, I'm not going to poach
in South Africa, because there's just too much policing there too. On the ball. You'll get
you'll get you'll get caught out, and there's no way you can do it. You know that that's where I
want it to be. It's kind of getting there with sun gaze is to an extent, and I would love that
to be for every reptile where no one dares set a foot yet with with those intentions.
This was Seeker Indie, Seeker's independent filmmaker showcase.
Keep coming back to see what else we have in store and the amazing stories we continue to highlight.
Thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time on Seeker.