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| The USA is the largest consumer of legally, internationally-
traded wildlife. A proportion of this trade consists
of species listed in the Appendices of CITES, and recorded in
the CITES Trade Database. Using this resource,we quantified
wildlife entering the USA for ?? of the most frequently recorded
wildlife products and a range of taxonomic groups
during ????–????. We examined trends in legal trade and
seizures of illegally traded items over time, and relationships
between trade and four national measures of biodiversity.
We found that: (?) there is an overall positive relationship
between legal imports and seizures; (?) Asia was the main
region exporting CITES-listed wildlife products to the USA;
(?) bears, crocodilians and other mammals (i.e. other than
Ursidae, Felidae, Cetacea, Proboscidea, Primates or Rhinocerotidae)
increased in both reported legal trade and seizures
over time; (?) legal trade in live specimens was reported to be
primarily from captive-produced, artificially-propagated or
ranched sources, whereas traded meat was primarily wild
sourced; (?) both seizures and legally traded items of felids
and elephants decreased over time; and (?) volumes of
both legally traded and seized species were correlated with
four attributes of exporting countries: species endemism,
species richness, number of IUCN threatened species, and
country size. The goal of our analysis was to inform CITES
decision-making and species conservation efforts. | |
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