Legal and illegal wildlife trade 437
TABLE 3 Numbers of captive-raised or ranched and wild-sourced goods for legal imports of CITES-listed species into the USA (exporter- reported live individuals, leather goods, trophies, and t of meat). CITES source codes R, D, A, C and F were considered captive-raised or ranched;Wwas considered wild. There were no records with code X. Records with source code I (confiscated or seized) were excluded. Percentages are calculated only for products with source codes.
Live (%)
Captive-raised or ranched Wild-sourced
Total including no source code
433,327,728 (88.2) (primarily artificially-propagated plants) 38,107,024 (7.8)
Pre-convention or ‘unknown’ source code 19,594,563 (4.0) Total with source code Missing source code
491,029,315 33,410,425 524,439,740
or were for specified purposes such as scientific research. The majority of legal trade of live individuals with a source code was reported as captive-produced, artificially propa- gated or ranched (88.2%), with the majority of this being artificially-propagated plants; only 7.8% were listed as wild-sourced (Table 3).
Trade over time
Total trade summed across all 21 taxonomic groups across all 82 products increased from1980 to 2013 (Table 4). In terms of taxonomic groups, therewas a statistically significant increase over time in legal trade of arachnids, corals, insects, leeches, sea cucumbers, bears, crocodilians, other mammals, sea turtles and tortoises, and plants (Table 4). In contrast, there was a statistically significant decrease over time in legal trade of clams/snails, amphibians, elephants, lizards, rhinos and snakes (Table 4). For seizures, we observed significant in- creases in clams and snails, bears, cetaceans, crocodilians, fish and other mammals, and significant linear decreases in seized quantities of felids and elephants (Table 4). Only in the clams/snails group did legal trade decline and seizures increase. Trade in the body parts of elephants (African and Asian Elephas maximus) decreased for both legal trade and seizures over this time period (Table 4).
Explanatory factors of trade
Our analyses detected significant correlations between legal trade volume and size of the exporting country, species diversity, number of endemic species and number of IUCN threatened species (Table 5). Additional significant positive correlations were observed between seizures and the same four independent variables, particularly seizures and the num- ber of endemic species in a country (r2 = 0.43,P,0.0001). When we used a GLM containing all explanatory factors, to determine the most parsimonious model, we found that a model that included only area of the exporting country pro- vided the best fit. Inreality, manyadditional factors contribute to trade patterns, such as the inclusion of additional species in the CITES Appendices over time (Robinson&Sinovas, 2018),
Leather (%) Trophies Meat, t (%)
9,178,471 (19.3) 277,219 (37.5) 1684.535 (4.4) 28,823,095 (60.5) 443,897 (60.0) 28,164.127 (89.9) 739,293 832,914
9,625,337 (20.2) 18,177 (2.5) 47,626,903 63,195,216 110,822,119
93,621
1,487.351 (4.7) 31,336.013 18,893.617 50,229.630
additional countries becoming party to CITES, trade restric- tions and CITES processes (e.g. listing changes including split-listings,Review of Significant Trade, taxonomic changes), as well as national-level decisions (e.g. reservations, limi- tations placed on inter-state trade in the USA).
Discussion
Our analysis shows that the largest overall exporters of both legal and illegal wildlife products and parts into the USA are countries in Asia, but there are geographical variations depending on product type. Asia’s dominance as the main continent of export to the USA is unsurprising; the South-east Asia region in particular has been identified as a wildlife trade hotspot (i.e. a region where wildlife trade poses a disproportionately large threat to biodiversity; Nijman, 2010; Rosen & Smith 2010; Petrossian et al., 2016). For meat, Latin America and the Caribbean was the largest exporting region, also exporting large volumes of live animals. The meat imported into the USA consisted mainly of queen conch, legally exported from Honduras, and seized upon entry from Jamaica and Bahamas, as well asmeat from the large freshwater fish Arapaima Arapaima gigas, legally exported from Peru. This region also exported large quan- tities of live animals, the majority of which were species of parrots. The large quantities of imports from this region may relate to its close proximity to the USA, as well as the extent of US tourism to these countries, as suggested else- where (Petrossian et al., 2016; Reino et al., 2017). In terms of IUCN Red List status (Table 2), the fact that a
higher proportion of seizures are categorized on the Red List as globally threatened may indicate the high incentives to trade these species illicitly, tighter trade controls through CITES Appendix I listing or trade suspensions/domestic le- gislation, the difficulty in obtaining appropriate permits, or some combination of these. However, the differences in the proportion of threatened and non-threatened species seized are not large and therefore we refrain from drawing substan- tive conclusions. We also caution that because of the time- span we considered, it is possible that for some taxa the
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
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