Scientists' warning to humanity on illegal or unsustainable wildlife trade

Cardoso, Pedro; Amponsah‐Mensah, Kofi; Barreiros, João P.; Bouhuys, Jamie; Cheung, Hubert; Davies, Alisa; Kumschick, Sabrina; Longhorn, Stuart J.; Martínez‐Muñoz, Carlos A.; Morcatty, Thaís Q.; Peters, Gretchen; Ripple, William J.; Rivera-Téllez, Emmanuel; Stringham, Oliver C.; Toomes, Adam; Tricorache, Patricia; Fukushima, Caroline Sayuri

doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2021.109341

Cited by 64 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 99 publications

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“…Unsustainable and at-risk trade can have severe and sustained consequences for both conservation and human livelihoods (Cardoso et al, 2021). It is therefore in the interest of the global community to ensure its future sustainability.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The vulnerability of large-bodied charismatic species to overharvesting and exploitation from the wildlife trade has attracted considerable scientific and popular attention (Cardoso et al, 2021). Yet, the risk that the international wildlife market poses to the survival of many lesser-known or less charismatic species is frequently overlooked (Fukushima et al, 2020; Margulies et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The demand for wildlife not protected by the CITES multilateral treaty

Watters

Stringham

Shepherd³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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The international wildlife trade presents severe conservation and environmental security risks. However, no international regulatory framework exists to monitor the trade of species not listed in the appendices of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). We explored the composition and dynamics of internationally regulated versus non-regulated trade, focussing on importations of wild-caught terrestrial vertebrates entering the United States of America (US) from 2009-2018. The prominence of the US in global wildlife imports and its detailed data collection conventions allows a unique opportunity to formally assess this substantial but often overlooked and understudied component of the legal wildlife trade. We found 3.6 times the number of unlisted species in US imports compared with CITES-listed species (1,366 versus 378). CITES-listed species were more likely to face reported conservation threats relative to the unlisted species (71.7% vs 27.5%). Yet, we found 376 unlisted species facing conversation threats, 297 species with unknown population trends and 139 species without an evaluation by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Unlisted species appeared novelly in imports at 5.5 times higher rates relative to CITES-listed species, where unlisted reptiles saw the largest rate of entry, averaging 53 unique species appearing in imports for the first time per year. Overall trade volumes were substantially larger for unlisted imports with approximately 11 times the number of animals relative to CITES-listed imports, however, import volumes were similar when compared at a species-by-species level. We found that the countries that were top exporters for CITES-listed shipments were mostly different from exporters of unlisted species. In highlighting the vulnerabilities of the wild-caught unlisted vertebrate trade entering the US and in the face of increasing global demand, we recommend governments adapt policies to monitor the trade of all wildlife.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The demand for wildlife not protected by the CITES multilateral treaty

Watters

Stringham

Shepherd³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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“…Over-exploited wild species, such as medicinal, charismatic ornamental, and forest timber species. Losers useful to humans include over-exploited wild species that face extreme anthropogenic pressures primarily due to a strong human interest (Cardoso et al, 2021;Marsh et al, 2021). Magnolia ekmanii (Magnoliales: Magnoliaceae) is a Critically Endangered tree endemic to Haiti and it is uncertain whether this species still exists in the wild (Figure 1c).…”

Section: Box 1 a Classification Of Winners And Losers Of Plant Divers...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Lords of the biosphere: Plant winners and losers in the Anthropocene

Kress

Krupnick

2022

Plants People Planet

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Societal Impact Statement The impact of humans on Earth's biodiversity varies across the Tree of Life. The extirpation and extinction of species is often determined by compatibility with human activities. Here we classify, where data are available, a significant portion (~30%) of vascular plant species as winners or losers with respect to this compatibility and show that currently losers greatly outnumber winners and that these losers will continue to exceed winners in the future even if species now deemed tentative winners succeed. In a rapidly changing world, species may tolerate shifting conditions, adapt, or migrate to new habitats. Species that benefit humankind may have an additional advantage of survival. Those that cannot tolerate, adapt, migrate, or prove useful will be the ultimate losers in the Anthropocene and may become extinct. Summary The impact of humans on the Earth continues to accelerate, affecting climate, land use, resource exploitation, species migrations, and habitat pollution. All of these changes have the potential to result in a massive extinction of populations and species of plants, fungi, and animals. However, the impact will vary across the diversity of life: some species, the “losers,” will decline and become extinct while others, the “winners,” will thrive as a result of human activities. We surveyed a variety of sources of information on economic uses, environmental tolerances, and conservation status and were able to classify 86,592 species of vascular plant into seven categories of winners and losers as follows: winners useful to humans and winners not useful to humans, losers useful to humans and losers not useful to humans, and currently neutral species. We also recognized tentative winners and potential losers, which we could not confidently categorize into the above five classes. We then mapped, both taxonomically and phylogenetically, the clear winners and losers across the major groups of vascular plants. The results suggest that currently many more species are losers than winners and that if the tentative winners and potential losers realize their projected trajectories, losers in the future will continue to greatly outnumber future winners. Furthermore, although winners and losers are today distributed across nearly all orders of vascular plants, all but two of the nine major phylogenetic lineages favor losers over winners. A significant phylogenetic signal was detected for percentages of both winners and losers and some of the smaller ancestral orders with a high percentage of losers may be at risk of extinction. In a rapidly changing world, plant species that tolerate human pressures, adapt, or shift distributions will continue to be the winners and survive the extinction bottleneck while the many more species that cannot do so will become the ultimate losers in the Anthropocene.

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“…Overharvesting, especially illegal overharvesting, is one of the main threats to biodiversity worldwide and a key driver of extinction (Cardoso et al., 2021; Morton et al., 2021). This is especially true when large mammalian herbivores are the target species (Ripple et al., 2015).…”

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confidence: 99%

Counting the costs of white rhino poaching: We are likely underestimating the indirect and long‐term impacts

Shrader

2022

Animal Conservation

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Scientists' warning to humanity on illegal or unsustainable wildlife trade

Cited by 64 publications

References 99 publications

The demand for wildlife not protected by the CITES multilateral treaty

The demand for wildlife not protected by the CITES multilateral treaty

Lords of the biosphere: Plant winners and losers in the Anthropocene

Counting the costs of white rhino poaching: We are likely underestimating the indirect and long‐term impacts

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