Michael Tlusty, Professor of Sustainability and Food Solutions, UMass Boston,Alice Catherine Hughes, Professor of Landscape Ecology, University of Hong Kong,Andrew Rhyne, Associate Professor of Marine Biology, Roger Williams University
When people think of wildlife trade, they often picture smugglers sneaking in rare and endangered species from far-off countries. Yet most wildlife trade is actually legal, and the United States is one of the world’s biggest wildlife importers.
New research that we and a team of colleagues published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that, over the last 22 years, people in the U.S. legally imported nearly 2.85 billion individual animals representing almost 30,000 species.
Some of these wild animals become pets, such as reptiles, spiders, clownfish, chimpanzees and even tigers. Thousands end up in zoos and aquariums, where many species on display come directly from the wild.
Medical research uses macaque monkeys and imports up to 39,000 of them every year. The fashion trade imports around 1 million to 2 million crocodile skins every year. Hunting trophies are also included in wildlife.
The largest number of imported species are birds – 4,985 different species are imported each year, led by Muscovy ducks, with over 6 million imported. Reptiles are next, with 3,048 species, led by iguanas and royal pythons. These largely become pets.
Not all wildlife are wild
We found that just over half of the animals imported into the U.S. come from the wild.
Capturing wildlife to sell to exporters can be an important income source for rural communities around the world, especially in Africa. However, wild imported species can also spread diseases or parasites or become invasive. In fact, these risks are so worrying that many imported animals are classed as “injurious wildlife” due to their potential role in transmitting diseases to native species.
Captive breeding has played an increasingly dominant role in recent years as a way to limit the impact on wild populations and to try to reduce disease spread.
However over half the individual animals from most groups of species, such as amphibians or mammals, still come from the wild, and there is no data on the impact of the wildlife trade on most wild populations.
Trade may pose a particular risk when species are already rare or have small ranges. Where studies have been done, the wild populations of traded species decreased by an average of 62% across the periods monitored.
Sustainable wildlife trade is possible, but it relies on careful monitoring to balance wild harvest and captive breeding.
Data is thin in many ways
For most species in the wildlife trade, there is still a lot that remains unknown, including even the number of species traded.
With so many species and shipments, wildlife inspectors are overwhelmed. Trade data may not include the full species name for groups like butterflies or fish. The values in many customs databases are reported by companies but never verified.
In our study, we relied on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Law Enforcement Management Information System, a wildlife import-export data collection system. However, few countries collate and release data in such a standardized way; meaning that for the majority of species legally traded around the world there is no available data.
For example, millions of Tokay geckos are imported as pets and for medicine, and are often reported to be bred in captivity. However, investigators cannot confirm that they weren’t actually caught in the wild.
Why tracking the wildlife trade is important
Biodiversity has a great number of economic and ecological benefits. There are also risks to importing wildlife. Understanding the many species and number of animals entering the country, and whether they were once wild or farmed, is important, because imported wildlife can cause health and ecological problems.
Wildlife can spread diseases to humans and to other animals. Wild-caught monkeys imported for medical research may carry diseases, including ones of particular risk to humans. Those with diseases are more likely to be wild than captive-bred.
Species that aren’t native to the U.S. may also escape or be released into the wild. Invasive species can cause billions of dollars in damage by consuming and outcompeting native wildlife and spreading diseases.
We believe better data on the wildlife trade could be used to set management goals, such as harvest quotas or no-take policies for those species in their country of origin.
What’s next
The researchers involved in this study come from institutes around the world and are all interested in improving data systems for wildlife trade.
Some of us focus on how e-commerce platforms such as Etsy and Instagram have become hotspots of wildlife trade and can be challenging to monitor without automation. Esty announced in 2024 that it would remove listings of endangered or threatened species. Others build tools to help wildlife inspectors process the large number of shipments in real time. Many of us examine the problems imported species cause when they become invasive.
In the age of machine learning, artificial intelligence and big data, it’s possible to better understand the wildlife trade. Consumers can help by buying less, and making informed decisions.
Michael Tlusty is a founding member of the Wildlife Detection Partnership and co-developed the Nature Intelligence System, which assists governments in collecting more accurate wildlife data..
Andrew Rhyne is currently on sabbatical funded by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), focused on the wildlife trade data. He is a founding member of the Wildlife Detection Partnership and co-developed the Nature Intelligence System, which assists governments in collecting more accurate wildlife data.
Alice Catherine Hughes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
