Thirty-six years of legal and illegal wildlife trade entering the USA MAR I A THERESE B AG ER OLSEN ,J ONAS GELDMANN,MIKE HARF O O T
DEREK P. TITTENSOR,BECKY P RICE,PABL O S IN O VAS,KATAR Z Y N A NOWA K NAT H A N J. SAN D E R S and NEIL D. BURGESS
Abstract The USA is the largest consumer of legally, inter- nationally-tradedwildlife.Aproportion of this trade consists of species listed in the Appendices of CITES, and recorded in theCITESTradeDatabase. Usingthis resource,we quantified wildlife entering the USA for 82 of the most frequently re- corded wildlife products and a range of taxonomic groups during 1979–2014. We examined trends in legal trade and seizures of illegally traded items over time, and relationships between trade and four national measures of biodiversity. We found that: (1) there is an overall positive relationship between legal imports and seizures; (2) Asia was the main region exporting CITES-listed wildlife products to the USA; (3) bears, crocodilians and other mammals (i.e. other than Ursidae, Felidae, Cetacea, Proboscidea, Primates or Rhino- cerotidae) increased in both reported legal trade and seizures over time; (4) legal trade in live specimens was reported to be primarily from captive-produced, artificially-propagated or ranched sources, whereas traded meat was primarily wild sourced; (5) both seizures and legally traded items of felids and elephants decreased over time; and (6) volumes of both legally traded and seized species were correlated with four attributes of exporting countries: species endemism, species richness, number of IUCN threatened species, and country size. The goal of our analysis was to inform CITES decision-making and species conservation efforts.
MARIATHERESE BAGEROLSEN (Corresponding author), JONASGELDMANN*,NATHAN J. SANDERS† and NEIL D. BURGESS‡ Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, Universitetsparken 15, Copenhagen E, Denmark E-mail
mariabagerolsen@gmail.com
MIKE HARFOOT,DEREK P. TITTENSOR§ and BECKY PRICE United Nations Environment Programme–World Conservation Monitoring Centre, Cambridge, UK
PABLO SINOVAS Fauna & Flora International, Cambridge, UK
KATARZYNA NOWAK¶ Department of Zoology and Entomology, University of the Free State, Qwaqwa Campus, Phuthaditjhaba, South Africa
*Also at: Conservation Science Group, Department of Zoology, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK †Also at: Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, University of Vermont, Burlington, USA ‡Also at: UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre, Cambridge, UK §Also at: Department of Biology, Life Sciences Centre, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
¶Also at: The Safina Center, Setauket, USA
Received 31 October 2018. Revision requested 30 November 2018. Accepted 1 May 2019. First published online 24 September 2019.
Keywords CITES, consumer awareness, consumer demand, illegal wildlife trade, legal wildlife trade, seizures, trade database, USA
Supplementary material for this article is available at
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605319000541
Introduction
millions of plants and animals from tens of thousands of species (Harfoot et al., 2018). This trade includes timber, live plants, animals as pets, skins, and animal parts used for medicine, food and trophies (Wyler & Sheikh, 2008; Harfoot et al., 2018). Wildlife trade, when unsustainable, poses one of the biggest global conservation challenges (Joppa et al., 2016), but also has the potential to play a piv- otal role in conservation through the sustainable use and management of populations and through the generation of conservation incentives (Broad et al., 2003). CITES is an international, multilateral agreement among
T
183 parties (182 member states and the European Union) that aims to ensure that the international trade in c. 35,000 species of wild animals and plants is legal, sustainable, traceable and does not jeopardize the survival of these populations in the wild (CITES, 2016c). These aims are achieved through a set of rules that regulate and monitor trade, including through a licensing system and require- ments to assess that trade is not detrimental to popula- tions before it is permitted; i.e. through national-level non-detriment findings (Hemley, 1994; CITES, 2016a,b). In the USA, for species listed under the Endangered Species Act, enhancement findings, in addition to non- detriment findings, must also be made to demonstrate that in addition to trade not being harmful it enhances the survival of the species in the wild in the country of export. CITES is one of the most important multilateral environ- mental agreements for reducing biodiversity loss and has played a pivotal role in regulating the international trade of threatened species. Here we analyse the imports of CITES-listed species
and products into the USA during 1979–2014.Weaim to illustrate patterns in trade, both spatially and tempor- ally, into the USA, and identify exporting country-level
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Oryx, 2021, 55(3), 432–441 © The Author(s), 2019. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605319000541
he international trade in wildlife and wildlife products is worth billions of dollars and involves hundreds of
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