The Oxford Martin Programme on Wildlife Trade is working to improve our understanding of the drivers and characteristics of illegal and unsustainable wildlife trade through novel and integrated approaches to research. It works to understand and change consumer behaviours to reduce illegal and unsustainable trade through a range of approaches, with the goal of driving real-world conservation impact.
The illegal wildlife trade is characterised by its sheer complexity. According to 2024 figures from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), thousands of species of plants and animals are illegally traded across almost every country in the world, for a dizzying array of purposes.
A core framework to regulate the international wildlife trade is the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES.
It works by determining which species can and cannot be traded internationally, including the purpose of trade (commercial trade versus wildlife that is imported as someone's personal effects, for example), and under what conditions.
It currently has 184 member countries plus the European Union and regulates international trade in nearly 41,000 species, the vast majority of which are plants.
The researchers of the Wildlife Trade programme argue that while CITES will remain important in tackling the illegal wildlife trade, more sophisticated approaches are needed to understand and govern it effectively.
They say an approach that considers the complex relationships between people and their local environments (or social-ecological systems) and engages fully with local communities as key actors is needed to more effectively inform regulations and policies while ensuring they are socially just.
According to the best available data, the illegal wildlife trade is worth billions of dollars a year and is the fourth biggest illegal activity worldwide. However, researchers from the Wildlife Trade programme have cautioned that many such estimates can be unreliable. This is typical of the challenges they face in obtaining robust figures.
Felled cedar trees
Looking at the UNODC report on wildlife crime worldwide, the top three animals most trafficked by the trade are rhinos, pangolins and elephants. For plants, it is cedars, rosewoods and agarwood species.
Crude estimates suggest that almost 900,000 pangolins or more have been poached over the period 2000-2019, with an average of 55 African elephants poached per day.
It is important to highlight that not all wildlife trade is illegal, or even unsustainable. As we have highlighted, CITES was set up to regulate international trade and help ensure its sustainability while supporting conservation efforts.
And, as of the end of last year, over 25 million records of wildlife trade have been reported on the CITES Trade Database since the convention was signed by an initial 80 countries in 1975. Over 1.5 million records are submitted annually to the database.
So, is international regulation of trade under CITES enough to ensure sustainability? The Oxford Martin Programme on Wildlife Trade has set out to answer this very question.
According to the UNODC report, around 10% of illegally traded wildlife commodities seized between 2015 and 2021 were intended for use in traditional medicines.
This is unsurprising – for example, the use of substances derived from animals in traditional Chinese medicine is believed to go back millennia.
However, the ever-growing demand for animal derived products for use in traditional medicines has driven poaching of many wildlife species, even driving them to the brink of extinction, in clear contravention of CITES rules banning international trade for commercial purposes.
One example of a group of species at risk – and explored in further detail below – are pangolins, which are in such high demand for their scales that these species have been described as the most trafficked wild mammal in the world. Three pangolin species are listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List.
Other examples include rhinos and tigers, poached for their horns and bones respectively, and the sun and Asiatic black bears, whose bile is harvested from captive animals, some held in poor conditions. Our researchers have also carried out work in support of efforts to conserve the saiga antelope, whose horns are in demand for medicinal purposes.
Saiga antelopes are hunted for their horns
Plants, such as orchids and trees producing timber, are also illegally and unsustainably harvested as food, medicine, ornaments and wood.
Of the 2,000 plus orchid species on the IUCN Red List:
They also make up over 70% of all species listed on CITES.
A lack of local governance could be compounding the threat to orchids. In India for example, only 11 orchid species are listed under the country’s wildlife protection laws. The country is home to over 1,250 species. It is also worth noting that South Asian Ayurvedic medicine uses at least 94 species of orchids in various preparations.
Timber, on the other hand, can be an important source of livelihood for local communities – when managed legally and sustainably. According to TRAFFIC, however, 10% to 30% of global timber trade is illegal, with this figure increasing substantially in tropical countries.
Researchers using CITES data found that in the period 2000 to 2022, an estimated 500,000 trophies involving 390,000 animals from more than 300 species were traded.
Several countries have, or are considering, banning imports of hunting trophies. The debate over whether to ban trophy hunting itself, and trade in trophies, is nuanced and controversial, stirring strong emotions on both sides. There is evidence that carefully-managed trophy hunting has delivered tangible benefits for wildlife conservation efforts and local people in several cases – for instance in saving the southern white rhino from the verge of extinction. At the time of writing, our researchers have suggested that a proposed UK law to ban the practice would be disproportionate and cause more harm than good.
Opponents of trophy hunting say permitted animal quotas are too high and could lead to declining wildlife populations, and that it can be cruel as tourist hunters are unlikely to be as skilled as professionals.
The UNODC acknowledges that there are many knowledge gaps that exist when it comes to reporting wildlife crime, and this is true of our understanding of wildlife trade as a whole.
Thanks to the work of our researchers on the Oxford Martin programme, we are all too aware that the illegal trade continues to endure and adapt.
Their 2024 paper analysed over 27,000 patents from 1970 to 2020 related to six traded organisms and found that patent numbers had increased by 130% per annum on average, compared with a background rate of 104% for patents filed globally. In fact, patenting of products created from wildlife continued to increase even after the introduction of regulations that banned or heavily regulated commercial trade in those species.
The researchers also reported that this ongoing innovation has led to a diversification of wildlife-derived products, such as rhino horn snuff products and livestock feed containing pangolin scales.
Clearly, regulatory measures such as commercial trade bans do not mean the end of trade in any given species and their derivatives. Developing effective interventions that prevent the overexploitation of wild species requires understanding the complex systems in which harvest and trade take place.
In the context of the patent data, for instance, researchers say policymakers could work with businesses and entrepreneurs identified by such patents to proactively develop measures that encourage commercial innovation as well as work towards meeting sustainability and conservation goals.
This study demonstrates how important it is that we continue to meet the need for solid evidence to inform a wildlife trade that aims to be sustainable and supports conservation efforts.
The Lady's Slipper Orchid is one of over 2,000 species on the IUCN Red List
COVID-19 shone a new light on the wildlife trade, revealing its prevalence, significance and its widespread implications for our health as well as our environment. It also revealed the challenges of regulating such a vast and complex trade.
The early stages of the pandemic had initially been linked to a “wet” market in Wuhan, in the Hubei province of eastern China. Wet markets are common in Asia, Africa and elsewhere, selling fresh fruit and vegetables, poultry, fresh meat and live animals, including wildlife.
This led almost 340 animal welfare and conservation organisations to write an open letter calling on the World Health Organization to force the closure of these markets to prevent future pandemics. This included asking the organisation to do what it could to scrap trade in wildlife altogether.
However, our researchers cautioned that blanket bans were unlikely to benefit people or wildlife, and were unfeasible because they overlooked the complexity of the wildlife trade and were likely to fuel illegal activity. Their alternative solution was to develop a more appropriate response that improved regulation of wildlife markets, especially those involving live animals, with full consideration of public health and animal welfare concerns to ensure there is low risk of future animal-to-human disease outbreaks.
This was later followed up by a study that demonstrated how banning hunting of all wild animals for food could increase food insecurity for some countries and marginalised groups, while also damaging the biodiversity and habitats that campaigners are trying to protect.
They estimated nearly 124,000 square kilometres of additional land would be needed - almost the size of Greece - to replace wild meat lost through a blanket ban, with Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa and the USA facing the greatest threats to natural habitats and biodiversity from such an expansion of animal agriculture.
Wet markets such as this one have prompted calls for an outright ban on the wildlife trade
According to the IUCN Red List, the four African species of pangolin are either listed as endangered or vulnerable. It is an even more dire situation for their Asian counterparts, with three of the four types classed as critically endangered and the other as endangered. All their numbers are waning.
Pangolins are in high demand for their scales, that are then ground up into powder or paste mainly for medicinal purposes, although there have even been patents filed for livestock feed containing pangolin scales.
A paper led by our researcher Dr Dan Challender has estimated that around 195,000 pangolins were trafficked for their scales in 2019 alone, despite them being banned for export by CITES. They have been identified as the world’s most trafficked wild mammal and even have a day dedicated to them to raise awareness of the threats they face.
Dan himself has been involved pangolin research and conservation for 15 years and is a lead on a new initiative to save the animal: Operation Pangolin is helping develop pangolin-specific monitoring methods and develop interventions to prevent illegal offtake and trafficking of the species in Central Africa. The initiative is generating much-needed data – in line with the Wildlife Trade programme’s overall ethos – to inform conservation strategies, including wildlife crime prevention.
Dan’s team is trying to understand the social-ecological systems in which pangolins are harvested, used and traded at key sites in Central Africa to inform locally-led sustainable conservation solutions. They will achieve this by conducting research in and around key protected areas with pangolins in Cameroon to understand the social-ecological systems in which pangolins are harvested, used, and trafficked.
This will also involve working with key stakeholders to collectively identify the conditions that result in the illegal harvest and trade of pangolins, with the information used to inform conservation interventions with local actors including indigenous peoples and local communities to ensure that any future use and/or trade of pangolins is not illegal and is not unsustainable.
A Philippine pangolin
Dan Challender works with partners to examine pangolin burrows
The Oxford Martin Programme on Wildlife Trade is helping to create a better future for species in the wildlife trade and for people by delivering evidence-led policy impact, including advising UN bodies such as UNODC, the Convention on Migratory Species and CITES.
The programme will continue to positively and objectively analyse and influence the trade as it looks to the future, including by focusing on developing new approaches to accessing and analysing online data in order to inform policy, combining the two main focuses of wildlife trade research (illegal and legal) into a more balanced and holistic approach, and building capacity for effective wildlife trade management worldwide by working with students and researchers.
Our researchers would welcome support for their efforts from like-minded researchers, NGOs and policymakers who are interested in their work and are keen to contribute to their efforts to deliver an evidence-led wildlife trade that is both legal and sustainable, to the benefit of both people and wildlife.
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