Study identifies more than 107,000 species used or traded globally and warns that major gaps in monitoring make it harder to protect vulnerable species.
Unsustainable wildlife trade is recognised as one of the greatest threats to species survival. Yet researchers still struggle to establish how many species are used or traded globally, let alone whether that trade is sustainable, because most groups of traded species are not systematically monitored.
The most recent estimate from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) suggested that around 50,000 species were in trade. However, research into individual groups has cast doubt on this figure. For example, studies of butterflies alone identified more traded species than IPBES estimated for all invertebrates in trade, suggesting that the true scale of wildlife trade has been substantially underestimated.
In a new study published in Science Advances, researchers provide the first comprehensive estimate of wildlife trade and use across different groups of plants and animals. They identified 107,356 species used or traded globally, more than double the previous estimate. This includes up to 47,685 animal species. The study also reports that 42% of all described vertebrate species are involved in trade.
Even this new figure may be an underestimate. Outside major international agreements such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which regulates international trade in listed species, and sectors such as fisheries, data on most traded species remain limited and fragmented, with little systematic collection.
For example, researchers found that more than 27% of animal species appeared only in data tracking wildlife imports into the United States, with no equivalent datasets available for many other countries. This leaves major gaps in our understanding of trade elsewhere, including Europe, a major importer of wildlife, particularly exotic pets, and Japan, where demand differs from that in the US. Without comparable data from more countries, researchers cannot establish the full scale of wildlife trade or reliably assess its sustainability.
Public perceptions of wildlife trade also fail to reflect its true scale. The term often brings to mind trafficking involving tigers, elephants or pangolins. Yet researchers estimate that legal wildlife trade is worth approximately ten times more than illegal trade, although the value of both is difficult to assess accurately. Gaps in regulation also create grey areas and loopholes that allow species to be “laundered into legality”.
These gaps undermine efforts to monitor progress towards international biodiversity targets. The Global Biodiversity Framework, the main international agreement aimed at halting and reversing biodiversity loss, uses sustainably harvested fish stocks as its headline wildlife trade indicator. Although the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has collected standardised fisheries data for decades, this indicator covers just 2–3% of all species in trade. As a result, even countries performing well against this measure may fail to capture the wider impacts of wildlife trade.
Ensuring that wildlife is used sustainably is a central goal of the Convention on Biological Diversity. But to assess sustainability, researchers need reliable information about which species are traded, in what quantities, where they come from and whether they were taken from the wild or bred in captivity. Currently, adequate data exist for only a small proportion of traded species.
The findings are particularly relevant following the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP17) in October, where countries reviewed global progress towards international biodiversity targets and agreed to accelerate action. The researchers warn that without more comprehensive data collection and international cooperation, governments will struggle to assess whether wildlife trade is sustainable or measure progress towards their commitments.
