Updated: 5 hours ago
Wildlife Doesn’t Belong Under the Tree
Love wildlife? Leave it off your holiday gift list—dead or alive.
Wildlife turns up on holiday shopping lists in surprisingly ordinary ways: an exotic pet for an animal-loving child, a preserved specimen for someone who loves natural history, a piece of jewelry made with animal parts. The appeal makes sense. The supply chain deserves a closer look.
This year, we can give the wildlife lovers in our lives something wonderful without giving them the wildlife.
The Animal Has a Backstory
The wildlife trade includes living animals and products made from their bodies. Some trade is legal; some violates wildlife protections. Either can create conservation problems when animals are removed faster than populations can replace them.
Capture also removes animals from the work they do in their ecosystems. Insect-eating bats, for example, help control insects. And because most bat species have just one pup a year, depleted populations can be slow to recover.
A polished listing rarely tells us how an animal was collected or what happened before it reached the seller.
An Exotic Pet Comes With Years of Homework
A reptile, parrot or other exotic animal can look like a memorable present. Its needs last well beyond the unwrapping.
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in England explains that exotic pets retain the needs they have in the wild. Depending on the species, proper care can require carefully controlled heat and lighting, specialized food, room to climb or burrow, appropriate social conditions, and access to an experienced veterinarian. Some live for decades.
Wild capture adds another concern, taking animals from their habitats and moving them through transport and sale. Being bred in captivity can avoid that particular harm, but it does not make an animal domesticated or its care simple.
My holiday rule: skip the live wildlife gift. An exotic animal that has been abandoned, released, or cannot safely live in the wild needs appropriate care, not a spot on someone’s wish list. A qualified rescue or veterinarian experienced with that species can help determine a safe placement. If you want to give something meaningful, support a rescue or sanctuary providing that care. Never release an exotic animal outdoors; it may die or, if it survives, harm native wildlife.
A Frame Does Not Make the Sourcing Ethical
Taxidermy deserves the same scrutiny. A seller’s claim that an animal “died naturally” or was “ethically sourced” needs evidence.
Consider the painted woolly bat, a small Asian species with striking orange-and-black coloring. Researchers examining U.S.-based Etsy, eBay, and Amazon listings during three months of the 2022 holiday season identified 284 individual painted woolly bats advertised for sale.
The 2024 study also found reassuring language about sourcing in roughly one-fifth of bat listings. Researchers challenged claims about captive breeding and natural deaths. Bat Conservation International explains that no commercial bat farms supply specimens for this trade. That makes claims of “captive-bred” bats especially questionable and points to the collection of animals from the wild.
Those findings do not make every preserved animal evidence of poaching. They do show why a reassuring label is not enough. For a holiday gift, a wildlife print or carefully made replica lets us skip that uncertainty.
Public Pressure Has Already Moved the Marketplace
Here is the encouraging part: speaking up has helped.
The Center for Biological Diversity reports that rising public concern helped prompt Etsy and eBay to bar bat sales. Etsy’s current wildlife policy explicitly includes bats among prohibited species. That is a meaningful change in what major marketplaces allow, even though a ban still needs enforcement.
The Center’s current campaign asks Amazon to follow their lead and stop selling taxidermy bats. Its letter highlights painted woolly and Javan slit-faced bats and the pressure specimen sales can place on wild populations.
Add your name to the letter urging Amazon to stop selling bats, then share it with another wildlife lover.
Spot a Listing? Speak Up
A marketplace ban is more useful when shoppers help flag listings that slip through. If you spot a real bat specimen or another item you believe violates a site’s wildlife rules, here’s where to start:
Etsy: Sign in, open the listing, and choose “Report this item to Etsy.” Select “I don’t think it meets Etsy’s policies,” choose the appropriate reason, and add a brief explanation. For a real bat specimen, point to Etsy’s wildlife policy, which explicitly prohibits bats. Etsy states reports are confidential.
eBay: On the page with the listing, select the question mark icon, or the three dots on mobile. Under “Report content,” choose “Submit report” and complete the form with the relevant content type, details, and reason. eBay also offers a separate reporting form through its guide.
Save the listing link and describe what you can verify. Report a suspected rule violation rather than assuming every wildlife-related item is illegal. On other marketplaces, look for a listing-report option or contact customer support.
Give the Wonder
A few easy swaps can keep the wildlife enthusiasm intact:
Choose wildlife art, photography, field guides, or clearly labeled replicas instead of real specimens.
Give a guided nature walk or a donation to a wildlife conservation organization in someone’s name. A symbolic adoption supports conservation; no animal comes home.
The person who loves bats can still get a bat-themed gift. The bat can keep its life. That seems like a pretty good holiday arrangement.
This story is part of The 89 Percent Project, an initiative of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now.
