Whilst living in America for a year I bought my first pet reptile, a small bearded dragon (pogona vitticeps), which is an extremely common reptile in both the US and Europe. After returning to the UK to complete my degree I obviously wanted to bring my pet home with me, and ran into a lot of confusing guidelines, red-tape, and, quite frankly, incompetent agencies. So I have composed this guide for the importation of pet reptiles into the UK from the US in the hopes that others will not have to go through the weeks of frustrating phone calls and beaurocratic nonsense that I have been through.

The first thing you need to do is decide whether you want to book the flight for your pet yourself, or have a private company handle everything for you. The latter option is obviously the easiest but it is extremely expensive. To give you an idea, my reptile weighs roughly 350g and when within her special shipping container (which is 16x8x30 inches) the entire parcel weighs less than 7lbs. Bearded dragons are also non-CITES reptiles (more on this later) and so do not require special export/import licenses or quarantine periods once on British soil. Knowing all this the major pet shippers I contacted wanted to charge me between £600 (GBP) and £1500; tha's as much as 2550 American dollars. When sent an itemised bill most of that cost is er "admin charges", which basically translates to handling charges and their profit margin. Personally, I really consider these companies to be a ible rip-off, but if you are very nervous about your pet travelling overseas this might be the best option for you, as they really will deal with everything.

Some pet shippers who are fully, and legally, certified:

http://www.petmovers.com/
http://www.jets4pets.com/uk.php
http://www.animalcouriers.com/index.html
http://petride.com/worldwide.htm
http://www.jet-a-pet.com/