National spatial and temporal patterns of the global wildlife trade

Abstract

The international wildlife trade is a vast global business contributing billions of dollars to national economies and spanning thousands of species. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) outlines a framework for the effective management of the global trade in threatened species. A key question is understanding how exports and imports between the 184 CITES Parties have changed across space and time, and how the successful implementation of CITES’ legal requirements impacts these patterns. Focusing on birds, mammals, amphibians, and reptiles traded from wild sources between 2000 and 2020, we highlight a small number of Parties imported or exported the majority of trade volume and that these Parties vary distinctly between taxa. Imports and exports of wild-sourced origin were mostly declining or fluctuating over time, with the majority of Parties maintaining very low but fluctuating volumes, even for Parties with high historic total volumes (>10,000 individuals). Nevertheless, reptiles had eight high-volume exporters with increasing trends, while exports of Indonesian reptiles and USA mammals had high and stable roles in trade. Parties with legislation that meets all the Convention’s legal requirements had faster-declining bird, mammal, and reptile import volumes versus those without, while export volumes were not associated with differing legislative status. This research highlights the declining role in the trade of many Parties that historically traded high volumes, but the emergence of a few newly dominant Parties as suppliers for whom confirming the robustness of their sustainability assessments is an urgent priority.