Animal Protection Agency (APA)

Our mission is to advance animal welfare by:

• Advocating on behalf of wild animals exploited by the pet trade. 

• Working at local and national level to lobby for improved legislation and enforcement and supporting campaigns elsewhere in Europe to protect exotic animals. 

• Harnessing mainstream and social media to raise awareness of the cruelty and destruction associated with the exotic pet trade as well as the health risks to people. ​

• Collaborating with other animal welfare and conservation organisations to share information and coordinate efforts to further our aims.

We ensure that all of our work is underpinned by robust data and published science. Our activities follow up and build upon the research undertaken or commissioned by the Animal Protection Agency Foundation. 

​APA is a proud member of 
Eurogroup for Animals,
a pan-European animal advocacy organisation.

We are supported by International Animal Rescue, whose work often involves rescuing wild animals from the pet trade. We owe much of our success to this amazing organisation.

We are also grateful to Lush for their long-term support, and for generally making the world a better place!

Some of our proudest achievements:

• We closed down and prevented countless exotic wild animal markets and auctions in the UK.

• By working alongside the Norwegian Animal Protection Alliance we persuaded the Norwegian government to retain a ban on reptile and amphibian keeping and trading, which remained in place for four years. 

• We formally intervened in Judicial Review proceedings brought by exotic pet market organisers against Arun District Council. The High Court found that the Council, based on APA’s evidence, acted correctly in warning a venue of ‘a substantial risk of unlawful activity’. The ruling is a boost to law enforcers.

• We spearheaded a campaign that dissuaded the UK government against legalising exotic pet markets. 

• Judicial Review proceedings, brought about by our campaign against bird markets, resulted in a High Court ruling that exotic pet markets in the UK could not be licenced. 

• We stopped the largest UK exotic bird market, which was licenced to sell 100,000 birds over two days. 

• By highlighting inadequacies in the UK quarantine system, we played a role in ending the import of wild-caught birds into the European Union for the pet trade. 

Animal Protection Agency - Company No: 5180872