Evaluating the relationships between the legal and illegal international wildlife trades

Tittensor, Derek P.; Harfoot, Michael B. J.; McLardy, Claire; Britten, Gregory L.; Kecse-Nagy, Katalin; Landry, Bryan; Outhwaite, Willow; Price, Becky; Sinovas, Pablo; Blanc, Julian; Burgess, Neil D.; Malsch, Kelly

doi:10.1111/conl.12724

Cited by 27 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 7 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This means that the reported live primate trade in the UN Comtrade Database resembles the international trade in long-tailed macaques. If legal trade mirrors illegal trade, and for example 28% is added to the volume of legal trade through confiscations in the US alone (Tittensor et al, 2020), the magnitude we present here only presents a fraction of the true trade. The reports of the Species Survival Commission furthermore discuss that laundering wild-caught long-tailed macaques as captive bred is a reoccurring event indicating that a portion of the legal trade presented here is actually illegal (SSN, 2012(SSN, , 2015a.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Monetary Value of Live Trade in a Commonly Traded Primate, the Long-Tailed Macaque, Based on Global Trade Statistics

Hansen

Gill²,

Briefer

et al. 2022

Front. Conserv. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Non-human primates (primates) are regarded as key research subjects for pre-clinical trials of several drugs aimed to alleviate human suffering. It has long been suggested that the predominant species in the international trade in live primates for use in research is the long-tailed macaque (Macaca fascicularis). However, little is still known about the value of this international trade. Whilst the international trade to supply the requirement for biomedical testing is known to encourage illegal wildlife trade, we lack a detailed understanding of the overall value and magnitude of this trade. Such information is vital to facilitate the design of effective conservation strategies in range countries, in order to mitigate the exploitation of wild populations by organized crime networks. Here, data from CITES and the UN Comtrade databases were combined to calculate the value of this trade. We also compared the number of individual primates traded as reported in the two databases to investigate possible correlations. Results show that, from 2010 to 2019, the international trade in long-tailed macaques constituted a market worth of ~US $1.25 billion. We found a positive correlation between individual primates traded in the UN Comtrade Database and individual long-tailed macaques reported in the CITES Trade Database, suggesting that we can use the UN Comtrade database to investigate values and magnitude of the international legal trade in wildlife, and that legal trade in live primates is primarily constituted of long-tailed macaques alone.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Monetary Value of Live Trade in a Commonly Traded Primate, the Long-Tailed Macaque, Based on Global Trade Statistics

Hansen

Gill²,

Briefer

et al. 2022

Front. Conserv. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…One issue pertaining to the illegal or unsustainable global wildlife trade is the lack of effective governance and law enforcement. Actors who belong to transnational networks with links to political and economic elites frequently exploit regulatory loopholes, using formal channels to trade wildlife products illegally (Hübschle 2017 ; Tittensor et al 2020 ). Weak and ineffective law enforcement with few repercussions from authorities also exacerbate the occurrence of poaching and illicit sales and possessions in protected wildlife species (Freund et al 2017 ).…”

Section: The Application Of the Framework To The Global Wildlife Tradementioning

confidence: 99%

An integrative framework for transformative social change: a case in global wildlife trade

2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

To achieve a sustainable future, it is imperative to transform human actions collectively and underlying social structures. Decades of research in social sciences have offered complementary insights into how such transformations might occur. However, these insights largely remain disjunct and of limited scope, such that strategies for solving global environmental challenges remain elusive. There is a need to integrate approaches focusing on individuals and social structures to understand how individual actions influence and are in turn influenced by social structures and norms. In this paper, we synthesize a range of insights across different schools of thought and integrate them in a novel framework for transformative social change. Our framework explains the relationships among individual behaviors, collective actions, and social structures and helps change agents guide societal transitions toward environmental sustainability. We apply this framework to the global wildlife trade—which presents several distinct challenges of human actions, especially amidst the Covid-19 pandemic—and identify pathways toward transformative change. One key distinction we make is between different individual actions that comprise the practice itself (e.g., buying wildlife products; private action ) and those that push for a broader system change in practice (e.g., signaling (dis)approval for wildlife consumption; social-signaling action , and campaigning for policies that end unsustainable wildlife trade; system-changing action ). In general, transformative change will require an integrative approach that includes both structural reforms and all three classes of individual action.

show abstract

“…Wildlife trafficking is increasingly recognized as both a specialized area of organized crime and a significant threat to many plant and animal species [2,34,35]. However, due to its intrinsic illegal nature, it is difficult to fully know its actual extent and consequences for wildlife [12,36]. Here, we provide the first reliable and simultaneous large-scale estimation of poaching pressure and abundance in the wild of a community of parrot species, showing that poaching of this taxonomic group is not opportunistic, but largely focused on species with particular traits that make them more attractive to people.…”

Section: Parrot Poaching Is Not An Opportunistic But a Selective Wilmentioning

confidence: 99%

Opportunistic or Non-Random Wildlife Crime? Attractiveness Rather Than Abundance in the Wild Leads to Selective Parrot Poaching

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Illegal wildlife trade, which mostly focuses on high-demand species, constitutes a major threat to biodiversity. However, whether poaching is an opportunistic crime within high-demand taxa such as parrots (i.e., harvesting proportional to species availability in the wild), or is selectively focused on particular, more desirable species, is still under debate. Answering this question has important conservation implications because selective poaching can lead to the extinction of some species through overharvesting. However, the challenges of estimating species abundances in the wild have hampered studies on this subject. We conducted a large-scale survey in Colombia to simultaneously estimate the relative abundance of wild parrots through roadside surveys (recording 10811 individuals from 25 species across 2221 km surveyed) and as household, illegally trapped pets in 282 sampled villages (1179 individuals from 21 species). We used for the first time a selectivity index to test selection on poaching. Results demonstrated that poaching is not opportunistic, but positively selects species based on their attractiveness, defined as a function of species size, coloration, and ability to talk, which is also reflected in their local prices. Our methodological approach, which shows how selection increases the conservation impacts of poaching for parrots, can be applied to other taxa also impacted by harvesting for trade or other purposes.

show abstract

Evaluating the relationships between the legal and illegal international wildlife trades

Cited by 27 publications

References 7 publications

Monetary Value of Live Trade in a Commonly Traded Primate, the Long-Tailed Macaque, Based on Global Trade Statistics

Monetary Value of Live Trade in a Commonly Traded Primate, the Long-Tailed Macaque, Based on Global Trade Statistics

An integrative framework for transformative social change: a case in global wildlife trade

Opportunistic or Non-Random Wildlife Crime? Attractiveness Rather Than Abundance in the Wild Leads to Selective Parrot Poaching

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About