Photo Credit: Mayank Savita
Scientific Frontline: Extended "At a Glance" Summary: Global Wildlife Trade
The Core Concept: The global wildlife trade involves the worldwide extraction, use, and commercial exchange of wild animal, plant, and fungal species. Recent comprehensive analyses reveal that this trade encompasses at least 107,356 species, including seafood, timber, medicinal plants, and pets, which is more than double previous estimates.
Key Distinction/Mechanism: Unlike the highly publicized illegal trade of endangered species like elephants and tigers, the vast majority of the global wildlife trade is legal, spans across diverse economic sectors, and is worth ten times more than the illegal market.
Origin/History: Historically, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) estimated that around 50,000 species were traded, but an October 2026 study published in Science Advances updated this figure to over 107,000 through extensive cross-sector data integration.
Major Frameworks/Components:
- Cross-sector data synthesis combining national and international monitoring programs, such as CITES, to track global species use.
- Identification of critical data gaps regarding species origin, such as whether animals are wild or captive-bred, and a lack of sustainability assessments.
- Standardization of international trade records, highlighting the United States as the only nation currently maintaining comprehensive, publicly shared datasets across a wide taxonomic range.
Branches of Science: Conservation Ecology, Population Biology, Environmental Economics, and Wildlife Management
Future Application: The development of systematic, transparent, and internationally coordinated data collection frameworks to monitor extraction volumes, track species origins, and enforce sustainable wildlife trade policies globally.
Why It Matters: Overexploitation remains one of the greatest threats to species survival, making standardized trade data urgently necessary to accurately assess sustainability and prevent the unnoticed extinction of thousands of heavily traded species.
More than 107,000 species are used and traded worldwide, over double previous estimates, according to new research that suggests the true scale could be far greater due to major gaps in trade data.
More than 107,000 species are used and traded worldwide, over double previous estimates, according to new research that suggests the true scale could be far greater due to major gaps in trade data.
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) previously estimated that around 50,000 species were in trade. But a large-scale analysis of wildlife trade monitoring programs by over 20 researchers, including from the University of Sheffield and the University of Melbourne, found that at least 107,356 species are used and traded globally. This includes 47,685 animal species, comprising 42% of all described vertebrate species.
Bringing together patchy, incomplete data from across sectors, the study found that few programs systematically record or monitor wildlife trade outside major conventions such as CITES (the main international treaty aiming to protect endangered species from unsustainable trade) and specific sectors such as fisheries. Even fewer collect key data like species origin (wild or captive-bred) or make any assessment of the sustainability of use.
Wildlife trade is far broader than the illegal trade in tigers and elephants that many people picture. It encompasses everything from seafood and medicinal plants to timber and pets, and most of it is legal and worth approximately ten times more than illegal trade.
Co-author Dr. Oscar Morton, Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow in the University of Sheffield’s School of Biosciences, said, “Overexploitation of wildlife is one of the greatest threats to species survival. Yet, despite this well-established risk, data on extraction and trade are both incomplete and highly fragmented.
“Even for the legal trade in wildlife, beyond a narrow subset of species groups, we have a woefully narrow understanding of what animals are sought after, in what volumes, and where they are coming from.”
Lead researcher Professor Alice Hughes, from the University of Melbourne’s School of BioSciences, said the United States is the only country that systematically records and publicly shares trade data across a wide range of species.
She said, “For much of the rest of the world, equivalent data simply does not exist. For some groups, 75% of traded species appear in US datasets. Yet for regions like Europe, trade may be comparable or even higher. The problem is we really don’t know because the data isn’t openly available and may not use sufficient standards to assess the true dimensions of trade.”
The researchers are calling for trade data collection to be standardized and more widely adopted, warning that the current lack of systematic recording prevents assessments of sustainability and limits the ability to manage trade’s impacts.
Dr. Morton added, “Governments have a real opportunity to take the lead nationally to drastically improve how trade is monitored and measured. Standardizing how we collect data would give us the evidence we need to manage trade sustainably. Without collective action, unsustainable exploitation will remain one of the greatest and most neglected threats to species survival.”
The research was shaped by individual expertise, while benefiting from collaboration across teams and partners.
Funding: N.D.B. was supported by the European Union’s Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement no. 101133983, project more4nature.
Published in journal: Science Advances
Title: The true scale of global wildlife trade is obscured by data gaps
Authors: Alice C. Hughes, Benjamin Michael Marshall, Daniel W. S. Challender, David P. Edwards, Evan A. Eskew, Julie L. Lockwood, Oscar Morton, Kelly Malsch, Caroline Fukushima, Amy Hinsley, Vincent Nijman, Shai Meiri, Sharon Baruch-Mordo, Michael F. Tlusty, Rodrigo Oyanedel, Jacqueline Jürgens, Samuel Pironon, Alyson T. Pavitt, Nazli Demirel, Molly R. C. Brown, Oliver J. S. Tallowin, Kim Friedman, Rishi Sharma, and Neil D. Burgess
Source/Credit: University of Sheffield
Edited by: Scientific Frontline
Reference Number: cons110226_01
