Study casts doubt on sustainability of regulated blood python snakeskin trade

JAKARTA — If you own a luxury fashion item made with snakeskin, there’s a good chance it came from a blood python in Indonesia, where the species isn’t considered threatened. But that’s likely not a real reflection of the snake’s status, with a new study showing there’s no evidence that the trade in the species is sustainable. A center for the trade in blood pythons (Python brongersmai) is the Indonesian province of North Sumatra, where industrial-scale slaughterhouses kill and skin tens of thousands of the snakes annually, much of it to meet international demand. The practice is regulated by …

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