Marine Iguana male (Amblyrhynchus cristatus)

I didn't know any zoo held marine iguanas! Let alone in Africa

@Mr Gharial These are illegally held animals, but with some weak law enforcement and creative Malinese paperwork, anything is possible.... But certainly not something to celebrate (or visit with good conscience)

Really astonishing how some people can bash a facility. Those iguanas, are listed on the cites trade database officially, thats Cites itself. Any he or they exported seem to be listed there too ontop of that every single country they sent to must have validated and confirmed their permits.. anyone who understands a bit about Cites should realise that. and yet here still some people bash the entire facility as an illegal operation based on sensationalist journalism and speculation... If i were the owner i would be filing lawsuits for slander.. geez..

@Fred Gahl The CITES permits of these animals are fake and say they are captive-bred. And it isn't speculation, the man who smuggled the iguanas in the first place was convicted in 2010 of smuggling Jewelled geckos out of New Zealand. Furthermore, Ecuador has strict regulations on what enters and leaves the Galapagos and given you are not legally allowed to even touch marine iguanas, there is no way the aforementioned smuggler could have gotten a legal permit. As such, it was an illegal operation, and I have no clue why you are defending a convicted smuggler.

@amur leopard are you trying to say the cites trade database which is run by CITES itself will list "fake permits" and that all the countries whom they exported to were also part of some conspiracy? Seriously?
Im not defending any smuggler what you however are doing is blatantly spreading false and malicious information.
If CITES itself even lists them then those permits are 100% authentic, no way around that.

@Fred Gahl If you can get a CITES authority to write a certificates claiming certain wild caught animals are captive bred, you basically whitewash them, as captive bred individuals with CITES papers can travel quite freely. There are enough examples of that happening (Like Ethiopian puff adder). But those iguanas have never been exported legally from Ecuasor and no export permits have been given and you won't find them in CITES databases. The paper trail in CITES for them starts in Mali (a country no iguana has been imported to legally) so either someone has been keeping and breeding marine iguanas, fijian crested iguanas etc. in Mali since before CITES existed, or the relevant authorities there have issued certificates that should never have been given. You tell me what is more likely....

I hope you realise that acording to your scenario virtually every single Varanid species originating from Australia kept in Europe in Zoos and privately would be illegal with "fake cites". Lwts keep things in context.
Further, you seem to forget that Galapagos Iguanas were in fact exported to around a dozen European Zoos including the Zurich Zoo in the 50s and 60s.
But none of that really proves one or the other.
And I in no way am doubting that the person previously was involved in dubious situations for which he was charged.
But for you to be running a smear campaign on someone by lying publicly that they used "fake permits" when Cites itself aknowledges them.. thats just malicious..

I know "poaching bad" is a general rule in the zoo world. But if they manage to breed these animals and spread them through other zoos, we might actually be able to breed the species properly

@Fred Gahl These laundered permits concern the original specimens imported to Uganda. That is not my statement, but something the IUCN iguana specialist group has stated:
http://www.iucn-isg.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/ISG_Newsletter_15.pdf , as well as the Ecuadorian government: https://en.bitacoraec.com/post/where-are-the-pink-iguanas-of-galapagos

Looking at the origins of the animals now in Uganda, they all came from Switzerland via Mali, where they were labeled as captive bred (this concerns the original imports, not the ones later exported, which are presumably their offspring). But none of these species has actually entered Mali according to the CITES database. Laundering wild-caught animals as captive bred is a very widespread practice in the reptile trade, as this loophole which permits trade in captive bred, but not in wild-caught specimens is a huge incentive to get a corrupt officer write you a cerfitificate labeling wild caught individuals as captive bred ones. These certificates are official (and are in the database), which is how they could travel freely from Mali to Switzerland to Uganda. But the certificates stink, as no Galapagos/Fijian iguana has ever entered Mali as long as CITES existed. Which means that either Mali was used to launder smuggled individuals into the official system or someone in Mali has been keeping and breeding these animals since before CITES existed... And nobody is buying the second option really, or can you explain it?