Thailand Sells Water Monitors: Will Market Fix Nature’s Boom?
The foreign tourist in Udon Thani mistook the lizard behind the glass for a crocodile. An easy mistake, perhaps, but a revealing one. It was an Asian water monitor, a reptile not just surviving, but thriving, in Thailand’s rapidly urbanizing landscape. And now, thanks to a decision by Thai authorities, it’s also becoming a tradable asset. For 500 baht ($15.50), you can buy a breeding-stock water monitor, legally, with the proper permits. Khaosod reports this is a response to a population boom that has officials worried. But doesn’t this very “solution” — turning a wild creature into a commodity to control its population — reveal the limits of our economic thinking when applied to ecological realities?
This isn’t simply about water monitors; it’s about how we, as a species, are choosing to relate to the non-human world. And it’s a symptom of a larger, often unspoken, operating system: the belief that markets can solve problems they often create, and that ecological health can be calibrated in balance sheets.
The very language is telling. “I want to emphasize that anyone wishing to purchase water monitors for breeding must first obtain permission from the Department of National Parks,” Atthapon Charoenchansa, Director-General of the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation, stressed. The phrase feels ripped from a speculative fiction, where biodiversity is managed by central planners, and species survival is subject to the whims of supply and demand. It’s a reminder of how deeply market thinking has colonized even the most fundamental aspects of the ecosystem. But this reliance on market mechanisms also masks a deeper truth: Thailand’s embrace of industrial agriculture, particularly monoculture farming like palm oil plantations, has dramatically reduced natural habitat and forced species like the water monitor into closer proximity with humans, leading to the very “boom” that now warrants a market “correction.”
To understand this, we need to zoom out. Thailand, like many rapidly developing nations, faces a complex challenge. Urban sprawl encroaches on natural habitats, forcing wildlife to adapt or perish. Water monitors, adaptable scavengers, have, to some extent, thrived in the cracks of this new reality. The increased population, however, now presents a “major concern,” one seemingly addressed through…capitalism.
This isn’t the first time this approach has been tried. In 1980s Zimbabwe, the CAMPFIRE program attempted to incentivize wildlife conservation by allowing rural communities to profit from hunting revenue. While some communities benefited, criticisms arose regarding unequal distribution of funds and the prioritization of trophy hunting over broader ecological concerns. Similarly, the establishment of private game reserves in South Africa has, in some instances, contributed to habitat preservation but also led to displacement of local communities and raised ethical questions about wildlife confinement. The outcomes have been mixed, to say the least. Some worked, some utterly failed, but they never did anything halfway.
The success hinges on careful regulation, transparency, and robust monitoring — none of which are guaranteed. As ecologist Richard Primack notes in A Primer of Conservation Biology, the long-term sustainability of any wildlife management program depends on its ability to adapt to changing environmental and socioeconomic conditions. What happens when the demand for water monitor products dries up, or the population, despite our best (or worst) efforts, collapses? Will the market correct itself, or will we simply be left with a surplus of unwanted reptiles, further disrupting the ecosystem?
Perhaps more unsettling is the precedent this sets. Other wildlife already have a price on their head: wild deer (30,000 baht), silver pheasants (2,000 baht), even cobras (200 baht). This commodification risks reducing complex ecological entities to mere economic units, potentially undermining their intrinsic value and making them more vulnerable to exploitation. The long-term implications are difficult to predict, but the message is clear: nature, in many ways, is now for sale. But what gets lost when we translate ecological complexity into price tags? What moral hazard arises when the value of a species is primarily determined by its economic potential?
The uncomfortable truth is that the Asian water monitor situation in Thailand is not a unique outlier, but a microcosm. It reflects a world increasingly grappling with the fallout of its own choices, a world where the lines between conservation and commodification are becoming increasingly blurred, and where the price of a reptile, in the end, may tell us more about ourselves — our values, our assumptions, and our ultimately limited understanding of the intricate web of life — than about the lizard itself. And that, perhaps, is the most alarming thing of all.
