Visiting Local Wildlife markets in Jakarta (Pasar Pramuka and Pasar Jatinegara)

I and Tim Lescher (a researcher from Alaskan Zoo, US) visited several animal markets in Jakarta in order to investigate whether they also sell reptiles in this place. The first market we visited was Pasar Pramuka, a popular wildlife market in Jakarta. It took a half hour to get there by Bajai from the place where we stayed in Central Jakarta. Rumour says that this market sell many kinds of wildlife including endangered species from around the world. But, when we arrived there, we only found many kinds of birds and several mammals, but no reptiles. We walked around for several minutes in this market and asked people where to find turtle markets, and they said in Jatinegara Market, which is close by.

We straight away to the second market using bajai, a unique local transportation that has only three tyres. When we arrived there, the animals are sold along the street market, in the side of big main road. Many kinds of exotic animals we could find here such as cats, dogs, birds, civets, iguanas, long tailed monkeys, squirrels, sugar gliders and many more. Finally we found what we are looking for in this place, the reptiles that are being sold here. However, we only found three species of reptiles which are alien species to Indonesia such as Indochinese Snail-eating Turtle (Malayemys subtrijuga), Common Slider (Trachemys Scripta) and Chinese Softshell Turtle (Trionyx sinensis). We tried to ask the vendors about where did they get it, they seemed hesitant to answer and just said that somebody provided it to them. We also asked whether they also have the Labi-labi Bintang or Narrow-headed Softshell Turtle (Chitra chitra javanensis), and they said nothing.

Some of the reptiles that we found that were being sold in Jatinegara Market in Jakarta

However, we did not do our best to get information about the turtles that are being sold here because they are very secretive in this matter. But at lest we got some pictures as evidence by using GoPro camera, and we could manage to get some of these animals photo.

Generally, all theses three species that we found here are not endemic species of Indonesia. I wonder if these animals will bring bad impacts to local inhabitants. Generally speaking that some collectors when they get bored with their pet, they sometime release it to they environment and this species could invade the local species and disturb the ecosystem.