Economic value of illegal wildlife trade entering the USA.

ABSTRACT: Illegal wildlife trade is one of the greatest threats to biodiversity. Understanding its economic value is a first step to establishing the magnitude of the problem. We develop a dataset of illegal wildlife trade prices and combine it with seizure data to estimate the economic value of illegal wildlife trade entering the USA. Using 2013 as a reference year, the results reveal that the economic value of illegal wildlife trade entering the USA was, using a conservative scenario where potential outliers were excluded, US$3.2 billion/year (uncertainty range (UR) 5th and 95th percentile of US$0.6-8.2 billion/year) and, without excluding potential outliers, US$4.3 billion/year (UR of US$1.3-9.6 billion/year). Our results for the USA alone are of a comparable magnitude to the lower bound of commo

SUBMITTER: Tow JH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8510001 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature