Assessing a reverse approach to traded species protection

Growing concern over the scale of unregulated wildlife trade has led to calls for fundamental changes to systems of species protection. A proposed “reverse listing” approach would ban the harvest and trade of all wild species, except those for which trade can be demonstrated to be sustainable. We evaluate the feasibility of this approach on an international scale and discuss policy solutions. Adopting reverse listing would not be straightforward; key issues include the social legitimacy of resulting laws, ensuring effective law enforcement, and the treatment of trade from alternative (i.e., non-wild) sources. Reverse listing is not a panacea for protecting biodiversity from overexploitation, and a combination of approaches is needed to effectively regulate the world’s wildlife trade.