Shipping snakes from the USA to UK?

Hello,

Could somebody please be able to help me? How would you go about shipping snakes (a pair of rubber boas) from the USA to the UK please? Any tips and advice would be appreciated.

Thanks for reading,
Gerard.

One would have to have an export license, CITES permit, health inspection, and probably some other stuff I'm not remembering at the moment. Breeders that do a lot of exporting can generally get CITES paperwork quickly - for animals that they produce.
Realistically, it is fairly costly; and, with the exception of the above noted situation, it takes months to get everything processed.
I've never paid any attention to rubber boa pricing, but I suspect that a pair falls well short of most exporters' minimum purchase (most of the people I've talked to about exporting won't even think about it without a $2000 purchase).
I can't confirm this to be accurate, but I've seen quotes in the $850-1000 range for all the necessary permits, inspections, shipping, etc...and that is paid by the buyer, in addition to the purchase price. (I believe the recipient has to have an import license, as well; but I'm not 100% on that).

Originally Posted by hhmoore

One would have to have an export license, CITES permit, health inspection, and probably some other stuff I'm not remembering at the moment. Breeders that do a lot of exporting can generally get CITES paperwork quickly - for animals that they produce.
Realistically, it is fairly costly; and, with the exception of the above noted situation, it takes months to get everything processed.
I've never paid any attention to rubber boa pricing, but I suspect that a pair falls well short of most exporters' minimum purchase (most of the people I've talked to about exporting won't even think about it without a $2000 purchase).
I can't confirm this to be accurate, but I've seen quotes in the $850-1000 range for all the necessary permits, inspections, shipping, etc...and that is paid by the buyer, in addition to the purchase price. (I believe the recipient has to have an import license, as well; but I'm not 100% on that).

Thank you, I never realised it would be so expensive

Try contacting Dutch Dragon Import (dutchdragonimport.com)- they specialize in shipping overseas, and if your snakes aren't CITES animals the shipping process will be relatively simple (and much cheaper) than if you tried getting paperwork, brokers, etc on your own.

Rubber boas are CITES II

Originally Posted by Gerard

Thank you, I never realised it would be so expensive

Yeah, it's pretty cost prohibitive. Maybe you could find one of your bigger breeders nearby that does some receiving, and work something out to have animals brought in with one of their shipments? Worth a try.

Originally Posted by Shadera

Yeah, it's pretty cost prohibitive. Maybe you could find one of your bigger breeders nearby that does some receiving, and work something out to have animals brought in with one of their shipments? Worth a try.

I've been told that they don't let you latch any animals onto their own imports as it's considered not good practice supposedly.

Originally Posted by Gerard

I've been told that they don't let you latch any animals onto their own imports as it's considered not good practice supposedly.

That isn't true. I've piggy backed animals on Imports or Exports through myself or other licensed individuals. Expect to pay a premium for those services though.......


I will tell you from experience, USFW does not like to grant Permits for native wildlife. You really have to know what you are doing to get those Permits signed off on......

So I'm guessing I'll have to try and source them somewhere in Europe then?