Twelve Galápagos marine iguanas were pulled from handbags at an Ecuadorian airport this year, stuffed inside with their limbs bound. Weeks later, officials found 32 more tied up in small plastic containers inside a single suitcase. The seizures came as the 2026/27 El Niño warmed the equatorial Pacific and began wiping out the seaweed that is the animals’ main food.
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Juan José Alava, a marine eco-toxicologist at Simon Fraser University, set out the double threat in a letter in the journal Science. His message is that a species already pushed hard by climate change is now also being poached, and that conservation officials have a narrow window to respond to both pressures at once, before starvation and smuggling erode the populations further.
Seizures near Guayaquil: 4, 12 and 32 iguanas
The sequence began in May 2026, when Ecuadorian officials found four Galápagos iguanas kept in a home near Guayaquil. Shortly afterward, 12 more turned up at a nearby airport, according to the Simon Fraser University release on the Science letter. Then, in late August, officials discovered the 32 iguanas in the suitcase. At least one confiscated animal was found dead, and several others died from the smuggling attempts.
Rescued iguanas cannot simply be released. Trafficked animals must be DNA-tested to determine which island they came from before they can be returned, so that each animal can be returned to its home island. Alava’s letter, published on September 3 titled “Combat Galapagos marine iguana trafficking” and carrying the identifier DOI 10.1126/science.aek3898, argues that enforcement has to move faster than the criminal networks behind the trade.
The paper also points to a paperwork loophole. Traffickers obtain export permits under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species by falsely labeling wild-caught iguanas as captive bred, citing Uganda, Switzerland, Mali and Japan, countries where no authorized breeding facilities exist. The researchers urge the convention’s parties to close those permitting gaps, and ask Ecuador to combat organized crime and to support coastal communities.
Super El Niño and the macroalgae die-off
Trafficking lands on a population with little room to absorb losses. Marine iguanas are algae specialists that feed on the growth of rocky coastal and intertidal zones, a specialization that the Galápagos Iguana Foundation notes ties their numbers to El Niño cycles. The species is listed as Vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and ten of its 11 recognized subspecies are rated locally as Endangered or Critically Endangered.
The same month officials found the first iguanas in Guayaquil, the 2026/27 El Niño began warming equatorial waters. About two weeks after the late-August suitcase seizure, according to the release, the event reached super status. Alava explained the mechanism simply: “That macroalgae is the iguana’s primary food source.” Warm water kills the intertidal seaweed, and the animals either starve or swim farther to find food and burn through their reserves.
The warming is still building. The U.S. Climate Prediction Center’s ENSO diagnostic discussion dated October 8 kept an El Niño Advisory in place, said the event continues to strengthen, and put the chance of a strong-to-very-strong event through January to March 2027 above 83%. Sea surface temperatures in the Niño-3.4 region ran 2.1 degrees Celsius above average.
Shrinking iguanas and the case for stronger enforcement
Alava warned that the iguanas are already visibly affected. “They are already shrinking in size and facing mass mortality,” he said, and a population in that condition is poorly placed to lose animals to collectors. The foundation puts the population at an estimated 19,800 to 210,000 animals and declining, a range wide enough to show how uncertain the count is, and it lists El Niño fluctuations, climate change, microplastic ingestion and predation by introduced cats, dogs and rats among the pressures.
Alava also noted that the iguanas already contend with chemical spills and plastics pollution, and that the species is already very vulnerable to climate change. Climate stress, pollution and poaching compound one another, and the marine iguana is endemic to the Galápagos Islands of Ecuador. Its entire range falls within three protected areas, the Galápagos National Park and National Marine Reserve, a UNESCO biosphere reserve and a World Heritage Site, yet none of those designations stops a bag from leaving the islands or a warm current from killing the seaweed offshore.
For wildlife officials, the lesson from this year’s seizures is that a species can lose animals to collectors during the same months its food supply is failing. The release stops short of estimating how many iguanas were taken in total, so the seizures of 4, 12 and 32 mark only what was intercepted. Fast DNA testing, tighter permit checks and community support, the measures the researchers recommend, are aimed at ensuring that animals seized in a bag at an airport end up back on the right island.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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