Demand for pet ants fuels Kenya’s illegal trade

Despite a string of prosecutions, the illegal trade in ants from East Africa continues, attracting would-be traffickers from Europe and China.

In March, Kenyan authorities arrested a Chinese national for attempting to smuggle 2,000 giant African harvester ants from the country’s main airport. He was later sentenced by a Nairobi court to a year in prison and fined KES 1 million (about USD 7,700) after pleading guilty.

Last May, a Kenyan court had convicted two Belgian teenagers for trying to traffic 5,000 ants of the same species, as Dialogue Earth reported at the time.

Behind these incidents lurks an international market for exotic ants.

“There is a rise of ant-colony-building enthusiasts, especially in Vietnam, China and Europe, that is fuelling the smuggling of ants from Kenya,” says Willis Okumu, senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, a think-tank headquartered in South Africa.  

The trade is not unique to the country, Okumu notes, but “Kenya’s authorities are perhaps more open to reporting arrests of traffickers within their airports, hence the spotlight on the country”.

Why ants matter

The smallness of ants can mislead people on the size of their importance to ecosystems. They are involved in soil and nutrient recycling and have symbiotic relationships with species such as acacia trees which they defend from herbivores. By mixing and dispersing seeds, harvester ants help keep east Africa’s grasslands healthy.

“They build large nests that change the shape of the grassland, influencing and providing opportunities for many other species,” Dino Martins, an entomologist and former director of the Turkana Basin Institute in Kenya, told Dialogue Earth last year. “They also serve as food for various birds and mammals, including endangered pangolins, as well as the aardvark, aardwolves and elephant shrews.”

Benoit Guénard, associate professor of biology at Hong Kong University, says that as well as damaging ecosystems, ant smugglers also deprive researchers of opportunities to study ants in their natural environments.

“I am glad about what Kenya is doing by arresting smugglers,” Guénard says. “All they want is just to make money and fulfil the bragging rights of a few individuals who want to keep the ants.”

A thriving market

A study of online pet-ant sales in China estimated that close to 60,000 ant colonies from 209 species were sold in 89 cities during six months in 2021. More than a quarter of the traded species were not native to China, the study found.

Guénard says there has long been a thriving market for exotic ant species in the country, where there is a history of using ants for medicinal purposes. But the pet trade is the main driver of ant smuggling into China, he says.

Okumu says that relatively low penalties compared with the potential value of the ants may incentivise trafficking.

The illegal trade involves international buyers, intermediaries and local collectors, says Kenya Wildlife Service communications officer Duncan Juma.

Wildlife officers sort live queen ants being exhibited in a Kenyan court for a smuggling case. Some experts say relatively low penalties, compared with the ants’ potential value, may incentivise trafficking (Image: Andrew Kasuku / Associated Press / Alamy)

Intermediaries buy live ants from local people at low prices before the price is hiked up in their final destination markets, creating “incentives for exploitation of local communities and continued targeting of Kenya’s biodiversity”, Juma says.

In China, ants are usually sold as a package of a queen and a number of workers, according to research published this year by the Hong Kong University Species Victim Impact Statements Initiative (SVIS).

A review by Dialogue Earth in September found an online retailer listing the giant African harvester as for sale but out of stock.

Not all ants on the market are sold illegally, says Pat Stanchev, founder of Best Ants UK, an online platform selling insects.

Stanchev says everything they offer is legal as they only sell captive-bred stock or UK-native species.

“There is no route for smuggled ants to enter what we do,” he tells Dialogue Earth. “We don’t source or sell any ants from Africa, no wild-caught, no imports from the continent.”

Stanchev is of the view that responsible ant-keeping should go hand in hand with conservation, saying once one knows the crucial role ants play in conserving nature, “it becomes obvious why wild ant mining is the wrong path”.

“The hobby done properly means captive-bred colonies and native species kept well; not stripping insects from the wild,” Stanchev tells Dialogue Earth.

A clandestine trade

Although data is hard to come by, the online traders and recent seizures point to a substantial market.

Juma says the illegal trade in Kenya involves consignments of hundreds or thousands of live ants and eggs as evidenced by the recent seizures.

Smugglers use special containers designed to keep live ants alive during transit, he explains.

“The consignments are then concealed in passenger baggage, while others are mis-declared and shipped as unaccompanied parcels through postal or courier services.”

The SVIS study established that in more than 70% of the seizures in China, the ants were hidden in parcels shipped to China. These had been declared as toy cars, cookie boxes, teddy bears. In some cases, plastic tubes containing ants were concealed in jars of milk formula or a shipment of clothes.

The study describes one seizure involving African species caught in the wild and stashed in a gourd, “likely a souvenir bought in Africa, sent via DHL”.

Efforts to eradicate the trade

Apart from ants, Kenya also grapples with smuggling of other insects such as praying mantises, butterflies, moths and beetles, according to Juma.

Kenya’s Wildlife Conservation and Management Act does not name ants, but its definition of “wildlife” is broad enough to cover wild indigenous animals, including insects. Section 99 prohibits the trade in, import, export or re-export of wildlife specimens without a permit from the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS). This means exporting wild ants requires authorisation even if the species isn’t listed as protected.

The seizures and arrests demonstrate increased enforcement activity, although their effect on the scale of trafficking remains difficult to assess.

“Trafficking in non-charismatic species such as ants remains a dynamic and evolving crime,” Juma says. “KWS, therefore, continues to review and strengthen its enforcement approaches, intelligence capabilities and partnerships to stay ahead of emerging trafficking methods.”

Juma said KWS is taking various steps including training up officers at major airports to stop trafficking before it happens, community awareness campaigns, and “following the money to identify and disrupt the wider criminal networks benefiting from wildlife trafficking”.