OSAKA (TR) – Tokyo Metropolitan Police have arrested a 36-year-old pet shop owner in Osaka City for illegally purchasing an extremely rare and endangered lizard native to Australia.
Daiki Uhara, a South Korean national whose real name is Woo Dae-soo, operates a reptile specialty shop in Yodogawa Ward. He is accused of violating the Act on Conservation of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora by receiving an unregistered Adelaide pygmy blue-tongued skink in a parking lot last December.
Investigators allege Uhara purchased the lizard, along with several others, from another dealer for several million yen. He allegedly completed the transaction fully aware that the reptile lacked the mandatory registration with the Ministry of the Environment. Police believe he intended to flip the endangered animal to a customer for a massive profit.
During police questioning, Uhara partially denied the allegations. “There is no mistake that I received it, but I didn’t know it was a specimen that required registration,” he claimed.
Social media
The suspect’s downfall came after he boasted about the illegal acquisition on the shop’s social media accounts.
“You won’t find this even if you search all over Japan,” the shop posted, hyping the animal as a “super rare species that never hits the market!” A vigilant user spotted the post and tipped off the police.
The Adelaide pygmy blue-tongued skink is an incredibly rare species that went unrecorded for over 30 years and was widely presumed extinct until its rediscovery in the 1990s. Australia strictly banned its export in the 1980s, and the species was placed under international trade regulations by the Washington Convention (CITES) three years ago due to rampant smuggling.
Reptile boom
The illicit acquisition comes amid an unprecedented reptile boom in Japan. Fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic and the development of artificial feed that eliminates the need for live insects, reptile shops have aggressively expanded, leading to fierce competition.
Wildlife monitoring group WWF Japan strongly condemned the dealer’s actions, noting that the lizard should never have been in Japan and was undoubtedly smuggled.
“The fact that commercial operators are actively complicit in the illegal trade of rare species has been made starkly clear by this incident,” a WWF Japan representative said. “It is a highly critical situation.”
