The Sound of Silence
Birds calling, insects buzzing, water flowing, the dulcet patter of rain falling on dense vegetation — this is what home sounds like for the water monitor lizard, a large reptile native to low-elevation streams in the coastal rainforests of the Philippines.
Over the course of multiple days in transit hidden inside speakers and subwoofers — devices meant to enhance sound — dozens of juvenile water monitor lizards smuggled into the United States in 2016 were surrounded by unfamiliar noises: tense voices, doors opening and closing, engines running, the deafening roar of a jet during the 16-hour flight, and at times perhaps, an unnatural silence.
On Friday, September 11, in Tampa, Florida, the sixth individual was prosecuted as part of Operation Sound of Silence, an investigation conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Office of Law Enforcement (OLE) in collaboration with the National Bureau of Investigations (NBI) in the Philippines into the players involved in taking these lizards from their home.
Akbar Akram of Holiday, Florida, was sentenced to four years of probation, three months of home detention, and 288 hours of community service for his role in the transnational scheme, including reselling smuggled lizards for a profit to customers in Colorado, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.
The unprecedented international coordination facilitated by the Service’s attaché in Bangkok, Thailand, helped partners pinpoint three Filipino suppliers, 10 customers, and more than 30 shipments of lizards.
The nearly 100 water monitor lizards smuggled into the U.S. in these shipments will never go home to the rainforests of the Philippines. The confiscated animals will live out their lives in captivity in zoos and aquariums because of disease risks associated with returning them to the wild.
The investigation showed that between January and December of 2016, Akram and his business partner Derrick Semedo of Nashua, New Hampshire, knowingly purchased 22 illegally collected juvenile water monitor lizards from smugglers in the Philippines, and advertised them for sale in the United States.
“This was not simply a matter of someone buying something from another country because it was cheaper,” said James Dowd, Special Agent for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “They knew these lizards were taken from the wild, and shipped to the United States under inhumane conditions.”
The evidence is captured in photographs shared between the smugglers and their U.S. buyers on Facebook Messenger. After the lizards were caught, the smugglers would use electrical tape to bind the animals’ legs to their bodies and tape their mouths shut. Others had ropes tied around their stomachs to prevent their escapes. These ropes would burn and tear at their skin as they struggled for freedom.
After the U.S. buyers picked out the lizard they wanted from the photographs, the smugglers would stuff the animal into a sock, tape the sock shut, and then conceal the lizard inside the audio equipment without food or water. It would take about four days for the package to travel from the Philippines to Massachusetts, where Semedo lived at the time.
Dowd said, “A lot of times, the lizards would wind up sick, or dead.”
Both from the lack of nourishment, and from the cold. The average temperature in the coastal Philippines is about 76 degrees. The cargo hold on a commercial airplane is about 45 degrees.
Semedo, Akram, and the others were charged with smuggling and wildlife trafficking in violation of the Lacey Act, which prohibits the import, export, sale, purchase, or acquisition of fish, wildlife or plants that are taken, possessed, or transported contrary to state, federal, or international law.
All of the water-monitor species that were caught up in the scheme are protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES), which controls trade in order to prevent over exploitation — a growing problem. The Philippines has outlawed the collection and export of all of its native water monitors in an effort to control a black market that seeks these animals for their unique patterns, vibrant colors, and high intelligence.
The majority of the smuggled lizards were yellow-headed water monitors, which Dowd explained are sought after for their distinct yellow-and-black patterned bodies. “People think about them as having a combination of a pet and a painting,” he said.
Cameron Siler thinks about them as something much more valuable.
“Water monitors are among the top predators in their habitat,” said Siler, Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Oklahoma, and Associate Curator of Herpetology at the Sam Noble Museum. “They eat fish, birds, mammals, other reptiles, and even dead animals.”
He explained that the predator pressure provided by these reptiles is particularly important for maintaining biodiversity in an island environment. In such a small landscape, removing predators can quickly short-circuit a system because of the unintended consequences for other species. For example, without predators, herbivores can go unchecked, leading to vegetation loss, erosion, sedimentation — a cascade of negative impacts.
The Philippine eagle once played a more dominant predator role in the island archipelago system. Now that species is critically endangered due to dramatic deforestation of its habitat. Siler, who studies the evolution of amphibians and reptiles, fears the yellow-headed water monitor could be on a similar trajectory. He has been traveling to the Philippines for research since 2004, and has noticed alarming changes in the species’ population in just those 15 years.
“We rarely see adults in the wild anymore,” he said. “Pressure from hunting and the pet trade is completely shifting the age structure of the populations that remain.”
For species that mature slowly, that’s an unsustainable shift. “Juveniles are barely reaching reproductive age before they are taken,” Siler said. “They just can’t recover from losses quickly.”
The losses are permanent. Even animals that are recovered from poachers cannot be returned home because of concerns about what they were exposed to in captivity — unnatural conditions and interaction with foreign species (including humans) puts animals at risk of contracting diseases that could spread to others in the wild.
Beyond their ecological role, these lizards have evolutionary significance. There are just two species of yellow-headed water monitors in the world, and they are found only in the Philippines.
“Each island represents a unique biological system, and contains pockets of unique genetic diversity we should be trying to preserve,” Siler said. Not because they have a market value. Because they are irreplaceable.
But Siler said he thinks there is still time. “When we are out during surveys, we still see diversity clinging on.”
They still see water monitors in the wild, seeming at ease in their place at the top of the food chain. “We come across them running across the forest floor, or asleep in streams,” he said.
Unsuspecting of another kind of predator thousands of miles away that could permanently remove them from home.
