Monitoring International Wildlife Trade with Coded Species Data

International trade in wildlife threatens biodiversity because it can result in habitat destruction, overexploitation of wildlife, and the spread of invasive alien species. Although traders are required to report goods, including wildlife, to border authorities when the goods are moved across international borders, customs authorities do not have mandatory, standardized reporting requirements for species information. Thus, authorities cannot capture species-specific data in a form that is accurate, accessible, standardized, retrievable, or separable from confidential client information. Accurate wildlife trade data are essential to managing sustainable trade and border biosecurity because the data contribute to intelligence, enforcement, monitoring, and decision making. Although a number of mechanisms exist to capture wildlife trade data (e.g., U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Law Enforcement Management Information System; United Nations Environment Program—World Conservation Monitoring Centre’s Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora [CITES] Trade Database), there is not a single comprehensive, international, harmonized mechanism that captures these data. We reviewed the current customs reporting system for documenting the wildlife trade and propose a complementary coding system whereby customs authorities adopt an existing taxonomic classification system to standardize, organize, and capture wildlife trade data.