In July 2024, customs officers in Chennai opened a shipment from Bangkok and found 402 baby iguanas. Sixty-seven were already dead. Among the survivors were 53 blue iguanas, a species listed in Appendix I of CITES, the highest tier of protection from international commercial trade.
That seizure sits at the loud end of a trade that has grown from a niche hobby into a sizable industry in India. More than 40,000 people across 30 states and union territories declared exotic pets under the government’s 2020 Voluntary Disclosure Scheme, according to a Humane World for Animals report published this year. The report cautions that figure may be a fraction of real ownership.
Why people buy them
Conservation researcher Uttara Mendiratta, who works on illegal wildlife trade, lists the pull: owning something nobody else has, the appeal of an animal seen as “cool,” and a belief that some species are easy to keep. Research on buyers in Japan found two more draws, a sense of “mental healing” and plain cuteness. Social media feeds all of it by showing what is trending and who is selling.
A January 2026 Kerala study of red-eared sliders asked people in the pet trade why they bought. Personal interest led at 54.8 percent, followed by the turtles’ friendly nature and easy care (16.1 percent), religious beliefs (12.9 percent) and long lifespan (9.7 percent). Of the turtles, 55 percent were bought for children.
When the animal grows up
“People buy a small, cute animal that eventually becomes bigger,” Mendiratta says. A turtle outgrows its tank. A parrot can live for decades. A primate becomes harder to manage at sexual maturity, and an iguana gets more aggressive. Owners move cities or find the vet bills too high.
Sixteen percent of respondents in the Kerala study said some owners released turtles into natural or open areas once they grew larger.
Red-eared sliders are the textbook case, says Sumanth Bindumadhav, India director of Humane World for Animals and a co-author of the 2026 report. Native to the Mississippi River basin, they have become popular in India in a short time. “They can become extremely dominant in water bodies, eating other organisms and establishing themselves as a dominant species,” he says. The IUCN’s Invasive Species Specialist Group lists the turtle among the 100 worst invasive alien species. India’s biodiversity legislation, however, has not formally designated any reptile as invasive, according to the Zoological Survey of India’s checklist.
The turtles have been recorded in Gujarat, Karnataka, West Bengal, Punjab, Rajasthan, Goa and Telangana. In Gujarat alone, one study found them in 35 water bodies that also hold native turtles. Customs officials seized 12,385 of them at the Chennai and Tiruchirappalli airports between 2018 and 2020.
Mendiratta is blunt about the videos of people tipping turtles into ponds as a kindly act. “It is not a good deed; they are releasing a highly invasive alien species,” she says.
Snakes, iguanas and a thin safety net
Green iguanas are common among keepers, and a 2025 modelling study found large parts of India are climatically suitable for them to establish and breed. Bindumadhav says snakes are turning up in rescues more often, venomous and non-venomous alike; a Burmese python hanging from a Mumbai balcony went viral a few years ago. He warns that India lacks antivenom for many imported species, naming black mambas and Gaboon vipers. Pawan Sharma, a wildlife conservationist with RAWW, says he has met abandoned anacondas, African grey parrots, macaws, marmosets and sugar gliders. “In some cases, we simply don’t know where they have gone,” he says of large snakes that broke out of their enclosures.
Nobody knows how many exotic birds are abandoned, because little systematic data exists.
Mendiratta says the country has clear methods for some invasive plants, such as Lantana camara, but not for animals. “What do you do with thousands of red-eared sliders? If we remove them from these waterbodies, where do they go?” she asks. The Central Zoo Authority lets recognised zoos and rescue centres take in abandoned exotic animals, but its guidelines give no owner a general right to hand one over. Sharma says his group takes in sliders and often puts them up for adoption.
