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Snake farming in Asia has increased over the past decade, and conservationists have expressed concerns that farms may foster overexploitation of wild populations and create legal conduits for illegally harvested wild individuals. We conducted face-to-face interviews with snake farmers in Viet Nam and China, with the aim of describing the basic models under which snakes are farmed for meat. We synthesized this information to assess the feasibility of farming snakes for human consumption, drawing conclusions about the impact of this industry on the conservation of wild snake populations. The most commonly farmed snakes include the monocled cobra Naja kaouthia, the Chinese cobra Naja atra, the oriental rat snake Ptyas mucosus and the king cobra Ophiophagus hannah. These species have life histories that are compatible with the demands of intensive livestock production, including early maturity, rapid growth rates, high reproductive output, efficient food assimilation rates and undemanding space requirements. Snake farmers appear to be capitalizing on the unique energy-efficiency of snakes to produce meat for human consumption. We conclude that the ease and profitability of farming snakes in China and Viet Nam make farming a viable substitute for harvesting wild snakes, with apparently minimal threat to wild populations. Snake farming offers a range of novel agricultural opportunities and has the potential to play a pivotal role in sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Commercial production systems for wildlife increasingly involve closed-cycle captive breeding, in which effective regulation requires methods for verifying the provenance of stock. We compared the isotopic and elemental compositions of skin from wild and captive-bred pythons raised under different diet regimes in Indonesia and Viet Nam to examine the efficacy of using these techniques as a means of determining the source and origin of skins entering international trade. We found significant differences in both isotopic and elemental markers between wild and captive-bred snakes, as well as those from different geographic origins. Combinations of both techniques were able to discriminate between diet treatments and geographic origins with up to 100% accuracy. Moreover, our experimental manipulation of python diets confirmed that the application of specific diet regimes (or the addition of known elemental markers) for captive-bred snakes can create signatures specific to those animals, vastly improving the efficacy of these methods. Our study strongly suggests that the analysis of isotope ratios and elemental markers offers a powerful tool for verifying the provenance of reptile skins entering trade – but these methodologies will be most applicable (and cost-effective) for species with small populations of genuine conservation concern, rather than for large volume trade in species for which there is little conservation risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]