Discrepancies in reported levels of international wildlife trade

The international wildlife trade is a principal cause of biodiversity loss, involving hundreds of millions of plants and animals each year, yet wildlife, trade records are notoriously unreliable We assessed the precision of wildlifie trade reports for the United States, the worlds largest consumer of endangered wildlife, by comparing data from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered,Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) with U.S. Customs data. For both US. imports and exports, CITES and Customs reported substantially different trade volumes for all taxa in all years. Discrepancies ranged from a CITES-reported volume 376% greater than that reported by Customs (live cored imports, 2000) to a Customs' report 5202% greater than CITES (conch exports, 2000). These widely divergent data suggest widespread inaccuracies that may distort the perceived risk of targeted wildlife exploitation, leading to misallocation of management resources and less effective conservation strategies. Conservation scientists and practitioners should reexamine assumptions regarding the significance of the international wildlife trade.