Another Australian in Bangkok

Do you know what this is? It is a bearded dragon, an Australian lizard. Maybe you don't see so many where you live but if you lived in Brisbane you would see a lot. I saw this one in a market in Bangkok. How did it get there?

The man in the market said it came from America. Perhaps this one did but the lizards have been taken from Australia and bred in America. It is against the law to take Australian lizards out of Australia. Do you know why? If people take too many away from Australia one day there might be none left in Australia. And we would have more of the insects that this lizard eats. Keeping the lizards in Australia helps to keep the balance of nature so we don't get too many insects.

Some people don't care about this. They know that people in America will pay them a lot of money to get one of these lizards as a pet. They catch wild lizards and they give them a drug to put them to sleep. They pack them in a suitcase and send them to America. Sometimes many lizards die on the way but the people who do this don't care because they can still make a lot of money from selling the ones that live.

Occasionally some of these people are caught trying to smuggle lizards out of Australia. They have to pay a lot of money as a fine. Perhaps they might even go to jail.