Delays in banning wildlife trade put hundreds of species at risk

Date:  February 14, 2019

Source:  Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs

From parrots to lizards, hundreds of animal species could be at risk of extinction because of a policy process that responds slowly to scientific knowledge, according to a new study in Science.

International wildlife authorities will gather in May to vote on wildlife trade restrictions at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) Conference of the Parties (CoP). The study suggests concrete steps policymakers can take to speed up a wildlife protection process that can take more than two decades.

"New trends in wildlife trade can develop quickly, with some species going from common to near extinction in just a few years," said Eyal Frank, a co-author of the study and an assistant professor at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy. "A policymaking process needs to respond quickly to new information in order to prevent extinction for hundreds of animals and plants. That's why it's absolutely critical that policymakers allow science to inform a speedy protection process."

Frank and his co-author, David Wilcove from Princeton University, analyzed 958 species on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Red List that are endangered by international trade. Of those, they discovered that 28 percent are not protected by CITES, the primary international framework for preventing species extinction due to international wildlife trade.

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