“Developed countries should do a better job of attacking this problem,” said Jose Sarney Filho, Brazil’s environment secretary. He said the remote Amazon region’s crushing poverty makes it hard to tackle the supply end, because peasants can easily be swayed to smuggle or capture wild animals. Traffickers in South America benefit from the growth of legitimate commerce in the Americas. Anti-trafficking experts say small snakes, frogs, lizards and spiders often are smuggled through express transport companies such as Federal Express, United Parcel Service and DHL Worldwide and regional next-day service providers. A load can be smuggled from Rio de Janeiro, Lima, Peru, or Quito, Ecuador, to a U.S. city in days. Endangered animals from the wild sometimes enter the United States with phony documents showing they were bred in captivity, which would make them legal for trade. Rare, prohibited parrots are drugged, their beaks and feet are taped and they are stuffed into plastic tubes hidden in suitcases or carry-on bags. Rare snakes or lizards are mixed into a load of common reptiles. Traffickers hide a pricey boa constrictor in a shipment of venomous snakes, hoping U.S Fish & Wildlife Service inspectors won’t want to look too closely.

“Nobody inspects 100 percent of what moves in commerce,” and traffickers know that, said Ernest Mayer, head of an anti-trafficking special operations unit for the Fish and Wildlife Service. “If they can bring several tons of marijuana across, they can get a few birds across.” Airport X-ray machines make it harder to smuggle birds and reptiles in baggage, so traffickers send couriers wearing special vest sneak out the eggs of rare macaws, the largest breed of parrots, which can fetch thousands of dollars each. Once the egg is delivered, it is impossible to tell whether it came from a captive bird or a wild one. Brazil holds the biggest swath of the Amazon region, unrivaled in the diversity of its plants and animals. The country is trying to fight smuggling, but it shares the Amazon River basin and rain forests with Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Suriname, Peru and Bolivia, where enforcement is more lax. Traffickers often spirit snakes, insects, parrots and rare frogs and lizards across vast, sparsely populated borders to those neighboring countries for international sale. Comprehensive statistics on seizures, arrests or almost anything else about wildlife trafficking are hard to come by. That may change soon. Brazil’s National Network to Fight Traffic in Wild Animals, a non-government organization that combats illegal trade, is completing the first study of more than 10,000 pages of police files, pet shop and customs records and street-market interviews.

“We have identified a very large increase in Brazilian wildlife to the United States, principally to pet shops. Animals leave from the Amazon over the land borders, mainly through Suriname, Colombia and Bolivia,” director Dener Giovanini said. “We have identified that nearly 40 percent of the (international wildlife) traffic is tied to traffic in drugs. The drug traffickers are diversifying, and starting to take note of the animal trafficking market.” That suggests the problem may be far more serious than U.S. law enforcement officials think; they say animal smuggling rings are small and loosely organized. The global wildlife trade is driven by demand. Whether it’s the hyacinth macaw from Brazil, said to fetch up to $60,000 in the Untied States, the plowshare tortoise from Madagascar or the komodo dragon from Indonesia, the rarer the animal the higher the price someone will pay.  Animals covered by the U.S. endangered Species Act are at a premium, as are those on the list of roughly 5,000 endangered animals that are protected by the Convention on international Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna, a global accord signed by 154 countries.

“If you were a collector and wanted to know what animals are most desirable, there’s the list of them,” said John Webb, assistant chief of the U.S. Justice Department’s wildlife and marine resources section. The Internet has facilitated the trade in illegal animals. A keyword search for nearly any rare or exotic creature will turn up someone who wants to buy or sell it. The Web site Exotic Hobbyist, which calls itself the “informal portal for the exotic keeper,” offers a forum for trade in primates and other exotic animals. On the message board, one request reads simply, “I want to buy a sloth.” A man from Ghana in West Africa offers direct shipping; another message urgently seeks exporters in Paraguay and Bolivia. One buyer asks for an African silverback gorilla. Traffickers have little to fear from the law. Although the Convention on International Trade prohibits trade in endangered wildlife, individual countries determine their own penalties. Few give jail sentences longer than a year, and most just levy fines. “People simply pay it and continue to break the law. It is a cost of doing business,” said Marceil Yeater, the Geneva-based chief of the legislation and compliance unit for the global accord. She added, “It remains a low-risk and high-profit business.”

In the United States, trafficking can draw up to 10 years under mandatory-sentencing guidelines. Prosecutors often try to prove other crimes, such as conspiracy and money laundering, to get even longer sentences. But in Brazil, at the heart of the trade, the tough laws are not enforced. Only fines are administered and, rarely, a one-year sentence. In any case, crowded Brazilian prisons can hardly accommodate more criminals. “It is an invitation to crime,” said Jose Carlos Araujo Lopes of the government’s Brazilian Environmental and Renewable Natural Resources Institute.