Open AccessEconomic value of illegal wildlife trade entering the USA
Author(s) -
Jia Hao Tow,
William S. Symes,
Luis Carrasco
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0258523
Subject(s) - wildlife trade , wildlife , total economic value , value (mathematics) , biodiversity , geography , economic impact analysis , natural resource economics , agricultural economics , business , economics , ecosystem services , ecology , biology , statistics , ecosystem , mathematics , microeconomics
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 commonly used global estimates of the economic value of IWT of uncertain origin, suggesting that the global economic value of IWT is currently underestimated and requires an urgent revision.