Somehow it appears that US customs are paranoid about all leather / animal skin items even if it’s just plain cow skin. I often heard US based people worry about leather straps being caught in customs.
Kangaroos are far from a threatened species as far as I know, I would think same with ostrich which is farmed in several places including South Africa.
Alligator and crocodile is more complex, the wild ones are protected which is why all exported alligator or croc should have CITES export licenses.
But Vietnam for example now has a cottage industry of alligator farms and I have to suspect most of the croc skin straps being sold out of Vietnam and Thailand come from such farmed skins- however the reason they’re so cheap is also because they haven’t gone through the trouble (and costs) of obtaining a CITES export licence.
For the record, CITES is the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species and basically it sets export quotas for the quantities that can be exported legally from various countries.
That’s why exporters need to apply for expensive licences.
