The true scope of global wildlife trade is obscured by data gaps

Overexploitation of wildlife is a major driver of biodiversity loss. International wildlife trade is regulated and monitored at local, national, regional and global scales through a variety of mechanisms, including Multilateral Environment Agreements (MEAs), with CITES playing a key role. Whilst databases and systems are available to measure, monitor, and manage legal trade, the data for species that fall outside the scope of existing MEAs are both limited and highly fragmented. Illegal trade further complicates efforts to monitor and manage wildlife trade, and under-regulation creates ‘grey-areas’ of purportedly legal trade. Here, we review available wildlife trade monitoring programs to assess how complete is our understanding of international wildlife trade. We find that far more species are in international legal trade than are regulated through international agreements. We found that 24,331- 42,385 animal species, including at least 22.3-42% of described vertebrate species, are in international trade. When including plants, this number increases to at least 102,056 species in use and trade. However, the US-specific LEMIS dataset, despite being only national in scope, frequently had higher diversity of species in trade than global databases. This highlights the current fragmentation and incompleteness of global wildlife trade data. Yet, whilst the US is the only country to make national level data available publicly, most countries have programs to control wildlife collection and import, which could be modified to monitor trade. Standardised collation of wildlife trade data would enable more sustainable trade of wildlife globally.