Here we document 47,381 individuals from 38 species, including 31 protected species sold between May 2017 and November 2019 in Wuhan’s markets. We note that no pangolins (or bats) were traded, supporting reformed opinion that pangolins were not likely the spillover host at the source of the current coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. While we caution against the misattribution of COVID-19’s origins, the wild animals on sale in Wuhan suffered poor welfare and hygiene conditions and we detail a range of other zoonotic infections they can potentially vector. Nevertheless, in a precautionary response to COVID-19, China’s Ministries temporarily banned all wildlife trade on 26th Jan 2020 until the COVID-19 pandemic concludes, and permanently banned eating and trading terrestrial wild (non-livestock) animals for food on 24th Feb 2020. These interventions, intended to protect human health, redress previous trading and enforcement inconsistencies, and will have collateral benefits for global biodiversity conservation and animal welfare.

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Due to revised phylogenies and newly discovered biogeographic distributions, scientific binomials are being amended continuously. Problematic is that wildlife protection legislation tends not to keep pace with these reappraisals, creating a wide range of legislative loopholes and potentially compromising ability to prosecute illegal wildlife trade (IWT). This serious and growing international problem proves particularly challenging in China because binomials used on China's national legislation have not been updated since 1989, alongside the enormous issues of IWT in this megadiverse nation. Here, we focus especially on mammals, because these support lucrative criminal markets and receive the greatest international policing efforts; however, all protected taxa are vulnerable to this misnaming ambiguity. To date, the names of 25 threatened species, including 18 mammals, have become incongruent with Chinese law. Additionally, two primate species, newly discovered within China, have not yet been incorporated into Chinese law. A further six mammalian species are known by different synonyms between Chinese law and CITES, hindering international policing and compilation of data on IWT. Taxonomic revisions similarly undermine legislation in other megadiverse countries; posing a critical risk to wildlife protection worldwide. We recommend that scientific binomials must be updated systematically across all 181 CITES signatory nations.

The sale of wild animals, including protected species, may relate to regional differences in socio‐politics, culture, and economic development. A better understanding of how these factors affect the illegal wildlife trade is therefore necessary to optimize the deployment of conservation resources and policing. To evaluate these factors in relation to the trade‐in protected animals as pets, we surveyed China's popular consumer‐to‐consumer website, http://taobao.com (analogous to eBay), and found that over 70,000 individual live parrots and turtles (totaling 46 and 49 protected species, respectively) were sold in just 150 days. Using analyses that attempted to account for species richness estimation and autocorrelation effects, we identified that regional economics promoted the occurrence and extent of pet sales. The provenance of these traded animals was ambiguous, but their vast numbers raise two concerns: if any proportion was sourced illegally from the wild, it is of conservation concern; whereas any bred illegally in captivity raise animal welfare concerns, because this would be unregulated. In the context of rapid economic development in China, it is thus important to reform the legislation that currently allows these commonly traded pet species to slip through the net intended to police animal welfare and illegal animal trading.

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