Trade in wildlife

This report synthesizes insights and lessons from decades of experience in community wildlife management (CWM), supplementing this with insights from more recent work focused on community-level responses to tackling the current illegal trade in wildlife (ITW) “crisis”.

Illegal killing and trade is a major threat to wildlife particularly in Africa. The current levels of elephant and rhino poaching are the highest in decades driven by burgeoning demand for ivory. East African countries, especially Tanzania, are increasingly implicated as source or transit countries for illegal ivory and rhino horn.

With 48 threatened bird species, and the highest number of breeding endemic bird species (11) in mainland Southeast Asia, Viet Nam is a global conservation priority. Many of these threatened species are hunted unsustainably for wildlife trade. Very little is known about the current true scale of the trade in Viet Nam as the most recent research was conducted in 2008.

A workshop was held in Cambridge between March 20-22, 2017, to bring together the PiN team and the Global Species Programme (GSP) and TRAFFIC to discuss the inclusion of data from PiN landscape assessments within the Species Information Services (SIS), building on discussions held over the last four years.

Each year, approximately 300,000 reticulated pythons (Python reticulatus) are harvested from the wild in Indonesia and Malaysia to supply skins for the international trade in exotic leathers. Concerns have been raised about the sustainability of such a high level of off-take, along with issues related to illegal trade and humane treatment of snakes.

Singapore is known to play a major role in the global trade and consumption in shark and ray parts, though a country-specific analysis has not been conducted recently. Based on this, TRAFFIC and WWF undertook an exercise to understand the scale of this trade involving Singapore, and the role it plays. This assessment describes the characteristics of shark product trade through Singapore over a ten-year period, from 2005 to 2014 as well as the current regulatory systems in place.

Malaysia is the world’s paramount illicit ivory transit country. To better understand this trade dynamic, TRAFFIC assessed information from ivory seizures -- made either by Malaysian authorities, or outside the country but with Malaysia identified as part of the trade chain -- from a period of over 11 years (from January 2003 to May 2014).

Singapore has a long history of involvement in the bird trade. To understand further the bird trade industry in Singapore, TRAFFIC undertook a rapid assessment of the open bird trade in Singapore’s pet shops. Surveys of 39 pet shops, listed by AVA as licensed to sell birds, were conducted over four days in November and December 2015. A full inventory of the species and volumes in trade was documented, excluding domesticated species.