Wildlife trade is any sale or exchange of wild animal and plant resources by people. This can involve live animals and plants or a diverse range of products needed or prized by humans - including skins, medicinal ingredients, tourist curios, timber, fish and other food products. Most wildlife trade is probably within national borders, but there is a large volume of wildlife in trade internationally.
Wildlife is traded for many reasons, including:
Food: Fruits, mushrooms, nuts, leaves and tubers are particularly important resources for sustaining livelihoods in many rural areas. Wild animals (including fish) contribute at least a fifth of the animal protein in rural diets in more than 60 countries. A TRAFFIC study demonstrated that reliance on wild meat is growing in Eastern and Southern Africa, in response to increased human populations and poverty.
Fuel: Trees and plants are an important source of fuel for cooking and heating, especially in rural areas.
Fodder: Fodder is considered a very important non-wood forest product in arid regions of Asia and Africa.
Building materials: These range from timber for furniture and housing to ingredients in manufacturing processes, such as gums and resins.
Clothing and ornaments: These include leather, furs, feathers.
Sport: Wildlife is collected for sports ranging from falconry to trophy hunting.
Healthcare: Wildlife provides everything from herbal remedies and traditional medicines to ingredients for industrial pharmaceuticals. An estimated 80 percent of the world's population relies on traditional medicines for primary health care.
Religion: Many animals and plants or derivatives are used for religious purposes.
Collections: Many wildlife specimens and curios are collected by museums and private individuals.
The primary motivating factor for wildlife traders is economic, from small-scale local income generation to major profit-oriented business, such as marine fisheries and logging companies. Between collectors of wildlife and the ultimate users, any number of middlemen may be involved in the wildlife trade, including specialists involved in storage, handling, transport, manufacturing, industrial production, marketing and the export and retail businesses. In fact, most of us are involved in wildlife trade in some way, even if it is just as end consumers of wildlife products.
The wildlife trade involves hundreds of millions of individual plants and animals from tens of thousands of species. Timber and seafood are the most important categories of international wildlife trade, in terms of both volume and value. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), more than 100 million tonnes of fish were traded in 1998, and more than a billion cubic metres of wood products were exported globally in 1999. TRAFFIC estimates that from 2000-2005, 3.4 million lizard skins, 2.9 million crocodile skins and 3.4 million snake skins, all species listed under CITES, were imported into the EU, along with 300,000 live snakes for the pet trade. In 2004 alone, the EU imported more than 10 million cubic metres of tropical timber from Africa, South America and Asia, worth US Dollars 1.9 billion.
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