Wildlife trade

Wildlife trade refers to the exchange of products derived from non-domesticated animals or plants usually extracted from their natural environment or raised under controlled conditions. It can involve the trade of living or dead individuals, tissues such as skins, bones or meat, or other products. Legal wildlife trade is regulated by the United Nations' Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which currently has 184 member countries called Parties. Illegal wildlife trade is widespread and constitutes one of the major illegal economic activities, comparable to the traffic of drugs and weapons. Wildlife trade is a serious conservation problem, has a negative effect on the viability of many wildlife populations and is one of the major threats to the survival of vertebrate species. The illegal wildlife trade has been linked to the emergence and spread of new infectious diseases in humans, including emergent viruses. Global initiatives like the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 15 have a target to end the illegal supply of wildlife.

Terminology Wildlife use is a general term for all uses of wildlife products, including ritual or religious uses, consumption of bushmeat and different forms of trade. Wildlife use is usually associated with hunting or poaching. Wildlife trade can be differentiated in legal and illegal trade, and both can have domestic (local or national) or international markets, but they might be often related to each other.

Ineffective monitoring of international wildlife trade The volume of international trade in wildlife commodities is immense and continues to rise. According to an analysis on the 2012 Harmonized System customs statistics, global import of wildlife products amounted to US$187 billion, of which fisheries commodities accounted for $113 billion; plants and forestry products for $71 billion; non-fishery animal for $3 billion including live animals, parts and derivatives. However, the global trade of wildlife commodities is ineffectively monitored and accounted for due to the constraint of the HS Code System used by the customs worldwide. The majority of international imports of wildlife are only recorded in extremely basic and general categories, such as 'plant' or 'animal products', with no further taxonomic detail. It is estimated that nearly 50% of the global import of plant and 70% of animal products are imported as general categories, with an exception for fisheries (ca. 5%), thanks to various multilateral fishery management agreements that requires taxon-specific fish catch reporting. Many jurisdictions rely on the declared HS Code of the consignments for detection and prosecution of illegal wildlife import. The lack of specificity of HS Code precludes effective monitoring and traceability of global wildlife trade. There is an increasing call for a reform of the HS Code to strengthen monitoring and enforcement of global wildlife trade.

Reasons for concern Different forms of wildlife trade or use (utilization, hunting, trapping, collection or over-exploitation) are the second major threat to endangered mammals and it also ranks among the first ten threats to birds, amphibians and cycads. Wildlife trade threatens the local ecosystem, and puts all species under additional pressure at a time when they are facing threats such as over-fishing, pollution, dredging, deforestation and other forms of habitat destruction. In the food chain, species higher up on the ladder ensure that the species below them do not become too abundant (hence controlling the population of those below them). Animals lower on the ladder are often non-carnivorous (but instead herbivorous) and control the abundance of plant species in a region. Due to the very large amounts of species that are removed from the ecosystem, it is not inconceivable that environmental problems will result, similar to e.g. overfishing, which causes an overabundance of jellyfish blooms. Furthermore, research suggests that invasive species are overrepresented in the wildlife trade, and are over 7 times more frequently traded than other species in the global pool. This may be due to a specific preference for invasive species in the trade. According to the United Nations, World Health Organization and World Wildlife Foundation, the Coronavirus disease 2019 is linked to the destruction of nature, especially to deforestation, habitat loss in general and wildlife trade. The head of the UN convention on biological diversity stated: "We have seen many diseases emerge over the years, such as Zika, Aids, Sars and Ebola, and they all originated from animal populations under conditions of severe environmental pressures."

Zoonoses

Outbreaks of zoonotic diseases including COVID-19, H5N1 avian flu, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), and monkeypox have been traced to live wildlife markets where the potential for zoonotic transmission is greatly increased. Wildlife markets in China have been implicated in the 2002 SARS outbreak and the COVID-19 pandemic. It is thought that the market environment provided optimal conditions for the coronaviruses of zoonotic origin that caused both outbreaks to mutate and subsequently spread to humans. Nonetheless, the COVID-19 pandemic declaration – and the subsequent quarantines – led to increased online trade in wildlife. The isolation of quarantine itself immediately became the selling point, with pets as companions and distractions.

Survival rate of species during transport In some instances, such as the sale of chameleons from Madagascar, organisms are transported by boat or via the air to consumers. The survival rate of these is extremely poor (only 1% survival rate). This is undoubtedly caused by the illegal nature; vendors rather not risk that the chameleons were to be discovered and so do not ship them in plain view. Due to the very low survival rate, it also means that far higher amounts of organisms (in this case chameleons) are taken away from the ecosystem, to make up for the losses.

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