Animals: Imports

Andrew Rosindell
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (1) how many live wild animals have been imported into the UK in each of the last five years;

(2) what proportion of live animals imported into the UK was taken from wild populations in each of the last five years.

Huw Irranca-Davies
This information is not held centrally.

However figures are available for imports into the UK from non-EU countries of species listed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Permits to allow the import of such species are issued by Animal Health's Wildlife Licensing and Registration Service. The vast majority of these relate to imports of species of the class Anthozoa, which includes sea anemones and corals.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|              |Live wild-taken specimens|Of which: are of the class Anthozoa|
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|2005          |56,595                   |42,687                             |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|2006          |55,112                   |44,256                             |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|2007          |96,528                   |79,672                             |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|2008          |82,102                   |61,529                             |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|2009 (to date)|15,704                   |11,994                             |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------


These figures exclude some CITES listed leeches, which are measured in kilograms rather than number of specimens.