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Above the state of Louisiana sits an international treaty that 184 parties enforce — and it's the reason a Louisiana alligator skin can cross a border legally while a poached crocodile skin cannot.
The Treaty
CITES — the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora — was agreed by representatives of 80 countries in Washington, D.C. on 3 March 1973 and entered into force on 1 July 1975. Today 184 parties (183 countries plus the European Union) enforce it, protecting roughly 40,900 species by regulating their international trade. Every party designates a Management Authority to issue permits and a Scientific Authority to judge the biological impact of trade.
Species are sorted into three appendices by how threatened they are by trade:
The Alligator's Status
The American alligator was listed as endangered in 1967, recovered under regulated trade, and was placed on CITES Appendix II in 1979; by 1987 it was declared fully recovered. Here's the subtle, important part: it stays regulated not because it is at risk, but because its hide closely resembles those of genuinely endangered crocodilians. Keeping legal alligator inside the tagging system makes it far harder for traffickers to launder poached, look-alike endangered skins as "legal American alligator." The alligator's paperwork protects other species.
The Universal Tag
Under CITES Resolution Conf. 11.12 (Rev. CoP15) — the "Universal tagging system for the identification of crocodilian skins" — essentially every raw, tanned, and finished crocodilian skin in international trade must be individually marked with a non-reusable, self-locking tag before it leaves the country of origin. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service describes it as "a tamper-resistant, self-locking tag with a unique barcode that tells you when and from where the alligator was taken." Each tag carries four pieces of information:
Tanneries will not work with untagged skins, and a skin without a CITES tag "cannot be exported from the United States." The tag is the skin's passport.
The Permits
The tag travels with paperwork. An export permit (and a re-export certificate for onward shipment) is issued only after two findings: a Legal Acquisition Finding — that the specimen wasn't obtained against the law — and, for Appendix I and II species, a Non-Detriment Finding by the Scientific Authority that the trade won't harm the species' survival. A valid CITES permit, in the convention's framing, certifies that the trade is "legal, sustainable and traceable." At the border, inspectors cross-check the physical tag against the permit; nationally, parties file annual reports into the CITES Trade Database, which holds more than 25 million records going back to 1975 — enough that large-scale laundering shows up as import/export mismatches.
Why Species ID Matters
There are around two dozen crocodilian species, and their legal status varies enormously — which is exactly why a tag and a species code matter. A handful of examples:
| Species | CITES status |
|---|---|
| American alligator | Appendix II — legal, sustainable trade with a tag |
| Saltwater crocodile | Appendix I, except Australia, Indonesia & PNG populations (Appendix II) |
| Nile crocodile | Appendix I, except ~13 managed African populations (Appendix II) |
| Spectacled caiman | Appendix II (one subspecies on Appendix I) |
| Black caiman | Appendix I, except Brazil (Appendix II) |
| Gharial · Siamese crocodile | Appendix I — critically endangered; trade effectively banned |
Because Appendix-I skins can look like legal Appendix-II ones, the universal tag plus the permit plus the species code are what separate a legal alligator or caiman product from a laundered endangered-species skin. (For the visible differences between these animals' leathers, see our exotic leathers guide and alligator vs. crocodile vs. caiman.)
Sources: CITES (cites.org) — "What is CITES," "How CITES works," the Appendices, Resolution Conf. 11.12 (Rev. CoP15), and the CITES Trade Database; U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, "American Alligators in CITES Export Programs" and "What Happens to Species on CITES Appendix II?"; IUCN Crocodile Specialist Group. Next: how authenticity is verified →
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Species, source, supplier, documentation, certificate — here's exactly what a genuine, traceable skin can prove.
How Authenticity Is Verified