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Journal of Environmental Management 354 (2024) 120141
0301-4797/© 2024 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Research article
A synthesis of wild animal-related trade laws in some of the World’s most
biodiverse countries
Gohar A. Petrossian
a
,
*
, Angie Elwin
b
, Monique Sosnowski
c
, Thanaphon Nunphong
d
, Ho-
Tu Chiang
a
, Jim Karani Riungu
b
, Neil D’Cruze
c
,
e
a
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Department of Criminal Justice, 524 West 59th Street, New York, NY, 10019, USA
b
World Animal Protection, 222, Gray’s Inn Rd, London, UK
c
Farmingdale State College, Department of Criminal Justice, 2350 Broadhollow Road, Farmingdale, NY, 11735, USA
d
Department of Probation, 4 & 6 Fl Chaengwattana Government Complex Building A, Bangkok, 10210, Thailand
e
Recanati-Kaplan Centre, Tubney House, Abingdon Road, Tubney, Abingdon, OX13 5QL, UK
ARTICLE INFO
Keywords:
Animal welfare
Biodiversity
Illegal wildlife trade
Sustainable use
Commercial trade
Animal welfare law
ABSTRACT
We examined the laws and legal provisions governing the commercial trade of terrestrial wild fauna across the
trade chain in some of the world’s megadiverse countries and how these relate to key animal welfare and
conservation concerns. Over the past century, an increase in the quantity and complexity of laws related to
commercial wildlife trade has been observed in the 11 focal countries examined. Our review identied 95 laws
with 560 provisions adopted since 1910 across these countries. Surprisingly, the level of biological diversity in a
country does not correlate with the extent of legislation addressing wildlife trade. Moreover, legislation is un-
evenly distributed across different stages of the wildlife trade chain, with more provisions on extraction and
transportation compared to captive management. Notably, animal welfare considerations are relatively under-
represented in legislation related to wildlife trade, despite their broad implications for public health and
economies. Urgent legislative action is needed to meet global biodiversity targets and respond to the challenges
posed by the growing scale and complexity of the wildlife trade. Recommendations are made to streamline
legislation, consider the legal status of wild animals, and address gaps in enforcement mechanisms. We conclude
that alignment of national and international regulations is crucial for the effective protection of both wild animal
populations and individual animals’ welfare in the context of commercial trade. Further research is needed to
assess the effectiveness of existing laws, bridge legal gaps, and address diverse concerns related to wildlife trade,
including public health and the rights of local communities.
1. Introduction
With an estimated value of USD 300 billion annually, the global
trade in wildlife (excluding timber) is a burgeoning business, with live
plants, animals, and their by-products sold at an increasing scale
worldwide (Harvey, 2022; Hughes, 2021; McConkie and October,
2021). It is currently estimated that at least 7600 terrestrial vertebrates
(Scheffers et al., 2019) and several thousand invertebrate species
(Fukushima et al., 2020; Marshall et al., 2022) are involved in the trade
to satisfy the demand for a variety of purposes, including for food, pets,
luxury goods, sports, entertainment, research, and for traditional
medicines (UNODC, 2019; Li et al., 2023).
In many parts of the world, wildlife is exploited for essential sub-
sistence purposes to meet the basic needs of families or communities
(Santos-Fita et al., 2012; Schloenhardt et al., 2022). However, distinct
from this is the commercial exploitation of wildlife, which provides a
means to generate economic wealth and nancial benets (Harrison
et al., 2015). The commercial trade in wildlife can range from domestic
(within local communities and from rural to urban areas) to regional and
international scales, and (although not easily distinguishable; Broad
et al., 2014; Macdonald et al., 2021) it can be both legal and illegal, with
the latter occurring when this trade contravenes national or
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: gpetrossian@jjay.cuny.edu (G.A. Petrossian), AngieElwin@worldanimalprotection.org (A. Elwin), sosnowm@farmingdale.edu (M. Sosnowski),
nunphongth@outlook.com (T. Nunphong), ho-tu.chiang@jjay.cuny.edu (H.-T. Chiang), jriungu@jjay.cuny.edu (J.K. Riungu), NeilDCruze@worldanimalprotection.
org (N. D’Cruze).
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Environmental Management
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jenvman
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2024.120141
Received 22 September 2023; Received in revised form 5 December 2023; Accepted 18 January 2024
Journal of Environmental Management 354 (2024) 120141
2
international laws and conventions (Turner and Usher, 2021).
If carried out sustainably (in which relevant uncertainties are
appropriately monitored), wildlife trade can have positive development
and livelihood benets. For example, by increasing food security and by
generating economic opportunities for rural communities where other
non-consumptive employment and alternative sources of income are
inadequate (Cooney et al., 2015; Harrison et al., 2015; Roe, 2008).
Wildlife trade can also have positive conservation impacts by providing
incentives for the protection of species and habitats or by reducing
pressure on traded species through legal mechanisms and pathways
(CITES Secretariat, 2022). Although if trade is carried out legally and
sustainably, it can aid conservation efforts in theory, overall, in light of
the current prevalence of illegal and unsustainable practices, the com-
mercial trade in wildlife is recognized to be exacerbating the current
biodiversity crisis (Phelps et al., 2022) and increasing species extinction
rates (IPBES et al., 2019), with the potential to destroy local livelihoods
where people depend on natural resources (Cooney et al., 2015).
In addition to the detrimental impacts that the commercial exploi-
tation of wildlife can have on socioeconomics, biodiversity, and the
environment, an increasing body of scientic knowledge related to an-
imal sentience and the capacity of animals across a range of taxonomic
groups to experience emotional states, such as both pleasure and pain,
has led to growing concerns over the impacts of wildlife trade on animal
welfare (Caporale et al., 2005; Lambert et al., 2019, 2021, 2022a,
2022b; Sigaud et al., 2023; Wyatt et al., 2022). Of special attention are
the conditions encountered when wild animals are captured, killed,
temporarily stored, transported, and subsequently kept in captivity
(Baker et al., 2013; Wyatt et al., 2022). Due to this recognition that
individual animals can suffer as a result of their use (in both legal and
illegal aspects of the commercial wildlife trade), ethical views regarding
animal welfare have also become a serious topic of discussion, among
which are that animal species deserve not just protection and better
treatment, but also to be respected (Sollund, 2022; Wise, 2023).
Wildlife trade chains vary in their complexity. The main stages of the
commercial wildlife trade chain include taking from the wild, captive
breeding, in-country intermediate storage, transporting, killing, pro-
cessing, selling, and possessing (Baker et al., 2013; Sosnowski and
Moreto, 2020). Taking from the wild, captive breeding, farming, and
rearing animals taken as eggs or juveniles from the wild (often referred
to as “ranching” or “rearing”) can be implemented in an unsustainable
manner (Hughes et al., 2023b), and each stage poses various risks to
animal welfare (Baker et al., 2013; Green et al., 2023). In legal contexts,
the taking of live wildlife or killing in situ is alternatively referred to as
wildlife “extraction”, depending on the nature of the trade and the target
species (Aguilar and Morgera, 2009; Tsioumani and Morgera, 2010). At
this stage, wild-caught animals are also often captured and/or killed by
inhumane methods, such as poisoning and trapping (Baker et al., 2013;
RSPCA, 2017). In most cases, neither illegal nor legal trade is supported
by rigorous evidence of sustainability or population monitoring data,
which obscures accurate assessments of species or population-level im-
pacts, and has been identied as being particularly problematic in this
regard (Hughes et al., 2023b).
Given the aforementioned potential negative impacts that unsus-
tainable and unregulated trade practices can have on biodiversity and
wild animal welfare, the wildlife trade is regulated at both the inter-
national level [via convention-based governance, such as the Conven-
tion on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and
Flora (CITES) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)], and at
national levels [via statutes, decrees, and regulations, such as the Na-
tional Environmental Management Biodiversity Act (Act No.10 of 2004)
in South Africa, or the Minister of Agriculture Regulation (K.R.120/5/
2017) in Indonesia] (Macdonald et al., 2021). As such, private in-
dividuals and commercial entities can (knowingly or not) engage in the
unlawful sourcing, possession, or sale of wildlife, either in living form or
as derivative products (Warchol et al., 2003). Yet, although there are
national and international laws and agreements in place to ensure that
trade in live wild animal species and their body parts is sustainable,
humane, and safe, complexity and, in many cases, inconsistency too
often render existing regulations ineffective (Macdonald et al., 2021).
Furthermore, many countries, such as Iran, Thailand, China, and
Morocco, currently have no legislation concerning animal welfare
standards in place (Animal Policy International, n.d.; World Justice
Project, 2023).
Research examining a variety of aspects of the wildlife trade has
grown exponentially in the past several decades (Carpenter et al., 2014;
Marshall et al., 2020; Taylor et al., 2005), resulting in a number of
qualitative [including those focused on the impacts of extractions from
the wild, captivity (e.g., Ortega-Argueta et al., 2016), or transport and
commercial trade, on biodiversity (e.g., Harrington, 2015; Shanee,
2012) and animal welfare (e.g., Wyatt et al., 2022)] and quantitative
studies [such as those focused on a taxonomic – species level (e.g.,
Nijman et al., 2022), a national level (e.g., Mas´
es-García et al., 2021),
and a transnational or regional level (e.g., Arroyo-Quiroz and Wyatt,
2019)]. However, in contrast, relatively fewer studies have quantita-
tively examined the extent and adequacy of the laws that govern the
various aspects of wildlife trade. Some studies that do exist focus on the
effectiveness of national laws (Taylor et al., 2005), hunting legal pro-
visions across countries (Pascual et al., 2021), and compliance with
international trade law commitments (Whitehorn et al., 2019), among
others.
In this study, we examine the scope and scale of laws and legal
provisions governing the commercial trade of terrestrial wild fauna
across the trade chain in some of the world’s megadiverse countries
across multiple jurisdictions and how these relate to key animal welfare
and conservation concerns. The study explores four main research
questions: (1) What laws and provisions currently exist in relation to the
commercial exploitation of wild animals (extraction from the wild,
captive management, and trade (including commercial transportation
and sale)? (2) How do these laws and provisions vary among different
countries and geographic regions? (3) When did these laws and pro-
visions come into effect, and what temporal trends can be observed? (4)
What are the main gaps in current laws and provisions regarding the
commercial trade of wild animals?
By better understanding the scope and scale of laws and provisions
that currently exist in relation to the commercial trade of wildlife, we
hope to identify any gaps in the varying laws, as well as stimulate future
research and associated measures that can strengthen and improve
protection laws to minimize any negative impacts on biodiversity and
wild animal welfare across the globe.
2. Material & methods
2.1. Sampling strategy
This research focuses on laws and provisions that currently exist in
relation to the commercial trade of wild animals in the world’s 10 most
biodiverse countries,
1
as well as South Africa. These countries were
ranked using the cumulative Global Biodiversity Index (Nash, 2022).
This Index combines ve different major data sources, including Birdlife
DataZone, AmphibiaWeb, FishBase, Animalia, the Reptile Database, as
well as over 190 various sources for data on plants. The Index is
calculated by using a combination of the weighted total number of
vascular plants, shes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals for
each country, and, in some instances, the species extinction rate or en-
dangered status. South Africa was ranked 19th on this list, however, the
country was included in our study due to its unique characteristics, such
as its status as a oral region, the Capensis, as well as the country’s
recent policies focused on commercial wildlife use. All analyses detailed
1
These include Brazil, Indonesia, Colombia, China, Peru, Mexico, Australia,
Ecuador, India, United States, in that order.
G.A. Petrossian et al.
Journal of Environmental Management 354 (2024) 120141
3
here are based on a systematic review of the legislation of these 11
countries.
2.2. Data sources
2.2.1. Systematic review of legislation
ECOLEX (www.ecolex.org), a comprehensive and open-access data-
base of environmental law jointly operated by FAO, IUCN, and UNEP, is
the primary source for the collection of information on the legislation
pertaining to the commercial extraction, transport, captive breeding,
and the sale of terrestrial wildlife species. The database claims to pro-
vide the “most comprehensive possible global source of information on
environmental law”, and is considered to be one of the most reputable
data sources on this topic (ECOLEX, 2023). ECOLEX is systematically
reviewed and rened to ensure that the most up-to-date data are pro-
vided on international environmental agreements, treaties, national
environmental legislation, judicial decisions, and other supporting les,
such as technical guidance documents and policy literature (ECOLEX,
2023).
The full legal documents analyzed for this research were provided by
ECOLEX. To locate these records, we searched the database using the
following keywords: “wildlife”, “animals”, “fauna”, “captive”, “extract”,
“animal protection”, “hunting”, “export”, “import”, “commercial”, and
“transportation”. To be included in this study, the legislation needed to
pertain to either the commercial extraction, transport, captive breeding,
or sale of terrestrial wild animal species. Any law that is not directly
related to these three specic criteria has been excluded from the ana-
lyses. For each piece of relevant legislation, we collected the following
information: country, name of legislation, date implemented, document
type, and source. For each country, we restricted the search for the laws
at the federal level (i.e., we excluded any laws introduced at the state or
provincial levels). All data were extracted for the 11 countries from
January 2022 through April 2023.
Within ECOLEX, each legislative instrument is categorized into
various subjects and indexed with keywords. For example, the 2016
Biodiversity Conservation Act of Australia is indexed with “Environment
general; Fisheries, Forestry, Land & Soil; Water; Wild Species & Eco-
systems” as its subject and “Basic Legislation, Institution, Ecosystem
Preservation, Environmental Planning, Authorization/Permit … Marine
Area” as the keywords associated with it. We utilized these indices and
keywords for the analyses pertaining to the thematic classication of
these laws.
2.2.2. Country level expert consultation
In addition to using the ECOLEX database, we consulted country
experts (for all 11 target countries) and alternative sources, including
the Animal Law Legal Center (University of Michigan), Legal Atlas,
World Legal Information Institute (WorldLii), Library of Congress of the
United States of America, and the Convention on the International Trade
in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora (CITES) National Legislation
Project, to ensure that the legislation identied by the database consti-
tuted the most up-to-date information available, including any laws or
resolutions that were under review at the time of the assessment of the
country’s laws. We also analyzed ofcial national legislation databases
for the respective countries to obtain implementing regulations and
standards. For example, we reviewed the Ofcial Register of Laws
(Ecuador, Australia and Mexico), Ofcial Government websites (South
Africa, India, Peru), Government agency databases (Departamento
Administrativo de la Funci´
on Pública (DAFP) in Colombia), and ofcial
national codes (USA Code and the Code of Federal Regulations).
2.2.3. Identifying gaps in legislation
Identication of the main gaps (i.e., weaknesses, bottlenecks, and
conict of law) in current laws and provisions regarding the commercial
trade of wild animals involved three stages. In the rst stage, we per-
formed a systematic review of published literature using only the name
of each piece of legislation as the search term. The databases we
searched included OneSearch, Google Scholar, EbscoHost, Scopus, and
other popular databases available through the City University of New
York, John Jay College of Criminal Justice institutional subscription. No
timeframe was set for the search of the literature, allowing us to capture
all relevant available published studies and reports (in the English lan-
guage only
2
). Each piece of returned literature was screened for rele-
vance. To be included in the analysis, the literature captured required a
critical review of existing legislation in the target countries and identi-
ed key gaps in legal provisions relating to the exploitation, captive
breeding, and trade of terrestrial wildlife. A total of 77 peer-reviewed
scientic papers, reports by governments and NGOs, opinion pieces,
and other documents specically met these criteria. From each piece of
relevant litearture we extracted the gaps reported for each piece of
legislation.
In the second stage, the information extracted from the systematic
review was validated through consultations with in-country legal ex-
perts (for all 11 target countries), as well as consulting the expertise of
one of the authors of this study (JK), who is an animal rights and welfare
attorney. In the nal stage, one of the authors of this study (JK) per-
formed an in-dept analysis of the 95 legal texts compiled to examine the
nature and content of these laws and to identify any future gaps not
identied in stages one and two.
2.2.4. Wild animal trade
In order to understand recent wild animal trade patterns across the
11 focal countries, data were collected on legal and illegal trade. Data on
the volume of legal trade of wild terrestrial fauna were gathered from
the CITES trade database (https://trade.cites.org/) and data on the
volume of illegal trade of wild terrestrial fauna were gathered using the
TRAFFIC Wildlife Trade Portal database (https://www.wildlifetradep
ortal.org). For both databases, we searched only for the trade of wild
terrestrial fauna for the period 2014 to 2020. For each country, we
searched the CITES trade database for all sources of trade in terrestrial
wild fauna excluding “conscations/seizures” (code: I), all purposes,
and all trade terms. These records were ltered to examine the trade in
Animalia for each of the 11 focal countries over this time period. Illegal
wildlife trade and seizure records were extracted for each country from
the TRAFFIC Wildlife Trade Portal. The database was searched for in-
cidents pertaining to Animalia recorded from 2014 to 2020. No other
exclusions were made in searching the TRAFFIC database. This database
utilizes publicly accessible, or “open” sources, to aggregate international
data on illicit trade. The database is, therefore, likely skewed in terms of
the types and breadth of species included, as well as on the volume of
records per country. Nevertheless, it is currently the only publicly
available international illegal wildlife trade database that can be used to
make country-to-country comparisons.
2.2.5. The World Justice Project
In order to understand the correlation between the number and
complexity of laws with the overall rule of law within each country, we
collected data through the World Justice Project (WJP). WJP is an in-
dependent organization that engages in research on rule of law. The
organization has surveyed 139 countries and devised various indices
designed to measure the different aspects of rule of law in these coun-
tries, including: constraints of government powers, absence of corrup-
tion, open government, fundamental rights, order and security,
2
We acknowledge that relying on only English-language literature may limit
the generalizability of the ndings/assumptions in this research. However, the
gap analyses did not only rely on the English-language literature, but also on
the close examination of the 95 legal texts compiled to examine the nature and
content of these laws (some of which were translated using Google Translate to
be able to make the assessments). Additionally, in most cases, the English text
of these laws was available through the various databases consulted.
G.A. Petrossian et al.
Journal of Environmental Management 354 (2024) 120141
4
regulatory enforcement, civil justice, and criminal justice. Scores for
each of these indicators are calculated from 0.00 to 1.00, where higher
scores indicate stronger rule of law (World Justice Project, 2023).
2.2.6. World Bank
Lastly, in order to examine the correlation between a country’s gross
domestic product (GDP) and the number, as well as the complexity of
laws for each of the 11 focal countries examined, we collected data
through the World Bank data bank (World Bank, 2022).
2.3. Classication of laws into thematic elds
During the systematic search of ECOLEX, over 190 keywords asso-
ciated with 95 laws were identied. A total of 12 thematic classications
emerged from these keywords. These are summarized in Table 1. Of
these classications, ve themes specically pertaining to various ani-
mal welfare and conservation-related concerns, were further analyzed in
this research. These include ‘animal welfare’, ‘captive management for
non-conservation purposes’, ‘extraction from the wild’, ‘biological
conservation’, and ‘wildlife trade’.
Using the cumulative score of the presence of each keyword within
the examined laws of the 11 countries, we derived an index to capture
the ve thematic classication elds (‘animal welfare’, ‘captive man-
agement for non-conservation purposes’, ‘extraction from the wild’,
‘biological conservation’, and ‘wildlife trade’). The index is based on the
cumulative presence of keywords within each legal instrument, a mea-
sure used to assess the degree to which these laws encompass these core
animal welfare and conservation concerns. The indices do not use every
keyword within each thematic classication, rather the most relevant
ones. For example, while the “Animal Welfare Index” was built by using
all three keywords within this thematic eld (see Table 1), the “Captive
Management Index” included only ‘keeping of live animals’ and ‘ranch-
ing/captive breeding’ keywords; the “Extraction from the Wild Index”
excluded ‘game’; the “Wildlife Trade Index” excluded ‘transport/storage’,
and the “Biological Conservation Index” only included nine out of 29
keywords (biodiversity, ecosystem preservation, endangered species,
forest management and conservation, protected animal species, pro-
tected area, protection of habitats, protection of species, and sustainable
use). Terms that were too broad (i.e. they did not focus directly or solely
on the different stages of the wildlife trade, e.g., alien, wildlife, national
parks) were excluded from these indices.
2.4. Analytical strategy
A combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis techniques was
used to examine the proposed research questions. Descriptive analysis
was primarily used to summarize and visualize the data related to the
laws that specically addressed wildlife extraction, captive breeding,
and sale in the 11 focal countries. These analyses were limited to
tabulating and reporting the frequencies of the existing laws and the
specic provisions within these laws, as well as isolating the laws that
specically addressed the key conservation concerns (i.e., animal wel-
fare, captive management, extraction from the wild, wildlife trade, and
biological conservation). Data visualization comprised two components.
Content analysis and visualization of the legislative text, as well as the
literature reviewed to identify core gaps, was performed using the
Voyant Tools (Sinclair and Rockwell, 2023) program. ArcGIS Pro was
used to join the scores for the ve indices derived from Table 1, as well
as seizure incident data so that these data could be displayed spatially.
Additionally, as each legislation was classied on the basis of key-
words assigned by ECOLEX, these keywords were utilized to chart the
adoption of legislation over time. For this temporal analysis, keywords
of interest were color-coded on the basis of their categorization for
graphing (see Legend in Fig. 6). Selected legislation that did not have
dates associated with its adoption was left out of this analysis. Corre-
lation analyses and T-tests were performed using STATA to examine
temporal trends, and bivariate correlation analyses were run to examine
whether the number of laws of each country were associated with their
Global Biodiversity Indices and the Rule of Law Index of the World
Justice Project. Similarly, correlations were run with the number of laws
and the volume of CITES export and import permits issued by these
countries (as a measure of the overall volume of trade). Specic exam-
ples of the key gaps identied through the systematic review of the
literature are provided throughout in this study for context.
3. Results
3.1. Research question 1: What laws and provisions currently exist in
some of the world’s most biodiverse countries in relation to commercial
exploitation of wild animals (extraction from the wild, captive
management, and trade (including commercial transportation and sale))?
3.1.1. Number of laws
A total of 95 pieces of legislation relating to the commercial
exploitation of wild animals were identied for the 11 focal countries
(Table 2). Seven (over 60 %) countries have eight (8) or fewer laws, with
Mexico and Indonesia having the fewest laws overall. Additionally,
while the United States ranked 10th on the Global Biodiversity Index, it
had the most legal instruments in place (n =24), whereas Brazil, the
country ranked 1st on the Global Biodiversity Index, had only six such
laws in place. Among the countries in South America, Colombia (ranked
3rd on the Global Biodiversity Index) has the most laws in this regard,
with 11 such laws in place.
3.1.2. Provisions
3
within laws
Within the 95 legislations examined, there were a total of 560 pro-
visions; 222 provisions specically pertained to species extraction from
the wild, 112 to captive management of wild animals, and 226 related to
wild animal trade (commercial transportation and sale) (Fig. 1). There
was a total of 59 provisions within the 24 identied laws of the United
States related to wild animal trade (commercial transport and sale)
alone, while Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, and India had less than ten
provisions in this regard. Regarding the number of specic provisions
related to species extraction from the wild, ve countries, namely the
United States, China, Ecuador, Australia, and Colombia, had between 30
and 35 such provisions. Brazil, India, and South Africa, on the other
hand, had less than 10. Most countries had less than 15 provisions
related to captive management of wild animals, with only the United
States and Australia having twenty-seven and twenty-two provisions,
respectively.
3.1.3. Content analysis of the provisions
Content analysis of the text of the title and summary descriptions of
the 560 provisions using the Voyant Tool identied a total of 85 key
terms. After eliminating redundant, irrelevant and non-substantive vo-
cabulary, such as conjunctions, adjectives, and propositions, the ten
most frequently occurring keywords were: “wildlife” (n =169), “spe-
cies” (n =154), “wild” (n =141), “animals” (n =137), “hunting” (n =
119), “export” (n =99), “prohibited” (n =88), “products” (n =84),
“import” (n =84), and “animal” (n =79) (Fig. 2).
While some of these emerging keywords were generic, such as
“wildlife”, “species”, “wild”, “animals”, others specically related to the
nature of the legality/illegality of the activity, such as “hunting”,
“export”, “products”, and “import”. The provisions related to “hunting”
were quite varied. For example, §742j–1 of the Airborne Hunting Act of
the United States is a provision specic to the prohibition and penalties
related to the airborne hunting of wildlife that carries penalties of up to
USD5,000 or imprisonment, and an excerpt of the provision reads as:
3
These refer to stipulations, clauses, and terms within the legislation.
G.A. Petrossian et al.
Journal of Environmental Management 354 (2024) 120141
5
Table 1
The thematic classication of keywords from ECOLEX.
G.A. Petrossian et al.
Journal of Environmental Management 354 (2024) 120141
6
“Any person who— (1) while airborne in an aircraft shoots or at-
tempts to shoot for the purpose of capturing or killing any bird, sh,
or other animal … …shall be ned not more than $5,000 or
imprisoned not more than one year, or both.”
The General Environmental Law No 28611 of Peru captures the
hunting provision within its broader context of sustainable use of forest
resources, and contains provision §92.1. that reads as:
“The State establishes a forest policy guided by the principles of this Law,
promoting the sustainable use of forest resources and wildlife, as well as
the conservation of natural forests, highlighting, without prejudice to what
is indicated, the principles of ordering and zoning of the national forest
area, the management of forest resources, legal certainty in the granting of
rights and the ght against illegal logging and hunting.”
South Africa’s hunting provisions are captured within its Animal
Health Act of 2002, article 28 that regulates the
“hunting, shooting, capture, and disposing of game”.
Lastly, Indonesia’s 1994 Government Regulation on Game Hunting
Affairs (No 13) spells out the hunting provisions as they relate to hunting
locations, licenses, and paraphernalia, as well as contains provisions
specic to regulating traditional hunting of local people, such as in the
following provision:
“Local people conducting traditional hunting need not possess a
hunting act or a hunting guide and need not pay a levy on a hunting
license.”
The provisions related to wildlife “products” were also varied. For
example, Article 32 of the Wild Animal Conservation Law of the People’s
Republic of China specically prohibited the provision of online plat-
forms that can be used to trade wildlife illegally, and reads as:
“The provision of trading platforms for the illegal sale, purchase or
utilization of wildlife and the products thereof or prohibited hunting
equipment by internet trading platforms, goods exchange markets or
other trading space is prohibited.”
The Political Constitution of 1991 of the Republic of Colombia,
Article 289 details the procedures of the trade of wildlife products, and
reads as:
“Strict control will be exercised over the importation, introduction,
production, transformation, transportation, storage, marketing, dis-
tribution and use of animal and plant species and their products.”
Lastly, Brazil’s Decree No. 6514, which establishes the penalties and
administrative offenses for illegal activities against the environment,
details the trade in wildlife products in Article 14 that is specic to
regulating the:
“seizure of animals, products and by-products of fauna and ora,
products and by-products subject to the infraction, instruments, gear,
equipment or vehicles and vessels of any nature used in the
infraction.”
3.1.4. Thematic classication of the keywords by country
The alluvial diagram in Fig. 3 shows the links between each country’s
legislative instrument and the key constructs comprising the ve the-
matic indices identied in this study (1. Animal welfare; 2. Captive
management; 3. Extraction from the wild; 4. Wildlife trade; and 5.
Biological conservation). Results indicate that the weight given within
these thematic categories (measured by the number of laws) varies
substantially. Notably, there are fewer laws specically addressing an-
imal welfare within the provisions of these countries than those related
to biological conservation (that include such constructs as the protection
of species, protected areas; and endangered species). Of the top 10 most
prevalent key constructs, six (6) were related to biological conservation,
while one was related to the extraction of animals from the wild
(hunting and capture), one to the wildlife trade (international trade),
Table 2
Number of currently relevant laws and provisions related to wildlife extraction,
captive management, and trade by country.
COUNTRY NUMBER OF
LAWS
NUMBER OF PROVISIONS WITHIN THESE
LAWS
United
States
24 116
Colombia 11 62
Australia 10 95
China 9 83
Peru 8 32
Ecuador 7 55
South Africa 7 34
Brazil 6 19
India 6 22
Indonesia 4 19
Mexico 3 23
Fig. 1. The number of provisions within the laws of 11 focal countries related to the extraction, captive breeding, and commercial trade of wild animals.
G.A. Petrossian et al.
Journal of Environmental Management 354 (2024) 120141
7
and two to animal welfare (animal welfare and animal health).
Despite the overall availability of laws collectively addressing
various biodiversity and animal welfare concerns across countries, not
every country sufciently addresses these concerns. For example, only
Brazil contains a single law specically detailing animal cruelty pro-
visions, while general animal health-related issues are only addressed in
the laws of Australia, China, Colombia, Indonesia, South Africa, and the
United States. Moreover, China, Colombia, India, Mexico, Peru, South
Africa, and the United States have laws pertaining to animal welfare,
while Ecuador has no laws related to either of the three key constructs
related to animal welfare (animal welfare, against cruelty, or animal
health).
The laws of these countries are more focused on addressing biodi-
versity conservation, capturing issues of biodiversity, endangered spe-
cies, protection of habitat, nationally protected animals and species,
ecosystem preservation, and others. Nevertheless, there was a signi-
cant range between countries in the number of laws pertaining to
biodiversity conservation. For example, while the United States had 11
laws that specically covered issues related to species protection and
endangered species, the coverage of other countries of these specic
concerns ranged from zero (Brazil and Indonesia for endangered species;
and Brazil for protection of species) to eight (Australia), with the
average of two (2) such laws for the remaining countries.
When examining the bivariate correlations between the number of
laws of each country and the Global Biodiversity Index, no signicant
correlations emerged (r = − 0.29, p >0.05). Similarly, we found no
signicant correlations between the number of laws and the volume of
CITES export and import permits issued by these countries (for export
permits: r =0.04, p >0.05; for import permits: r = − 0.24, p >0.05).
However, signicant and strong correlations were found between a
country’s GDP and both the number of laws (r =0.78, p <0.01), and the
complexity of these laws (r =0.71, p <0.05).
When examining the bivariate correlations between each country’s
Global Biodiversity Index (Nash, 2022) and the number of laws captured
within the ve thematic indices (i.e. (1) animal welfare; (2) captive
management; (3) extraction from the wild; (4) wildlife trade; and (5)
biological conservation), the results showed that a country’s Global
Biodiversity Index was not overall associated with any of the ve
indices, indicating that being ranked high on the Global Biodiversity
Index did not affect the number of wildlife trade-related laws a country
had to protect its natural resources.
However, analysis of the specic components comprising these ve
indices revealed some statistically signicant correlations (see Table 3).
For example, animal health, which is one of the components of the
“Animal Welfare Index”, was signicantly and positively correlated with
hunting/capture, a component of the “Extraction From the Wild Index” (r
=0.94, p <0.01), indicating that countries that had a higher number of
laws on animal health also had a higher number of laws pertaining to
hunting/capture. Additionally, the various components of the “Wildlife
Trade Index” were associated with those of the “Biological Conservation
Index”. For example, the number of international trade laws was posi-
tively correlated with both the number of laws specically addressing
endangered species provisions (r =0.86, p <0.05) and those related to
the protection of the species (r =0.97, p <0.05), while the number of
internal trade laws was negatively correlated with the number of laws
specically addressing protected areas (r = − 0.96, p <0.05).
Each country’s Rule of Law Index, which comprised eight different
indicators, was correlated against (a) the number of laws identied and
(b) the number of total provisions within these laws (as a measure of the
complexity of these laws). Results indicate that the Rule of Law Index
was positively correlated with the complexity of these laws (r =0.67, p
<0.05), but not with the number of laws (r =0.58,p >0.05).
3.2. Research question 2: how do these laws vary among different
countries and world regions?
Fig. 4 shows the geographic/regional patterns in legislation related
to the ve thematic categories. When examining the “Wildlife Trade
Index” (which reects the relative number of laws specically address-
ing commercial trade of wild animals, including commercial trans-
portation and sale), it is evident that the United States, Australia, and the
countries in East and South and Southeastern Asia (India and China)
have a greater number of laws to specically address wildlife trade than
all the countries in South America (with the exception of Ecuador). The
Fig. 2. Emerging keywords from the content analyses of the 560 provisions of 95 laws across 11 focal countries. The size of the word indicates the frequency at which
the word appears in the text.
G.A. Petrossian et al.
Journal of Environmental Management 354 (2024) 120141
8
Fig. 3. Linking legislative instruments of the different countries to the key constructs comprising ve indices examined in this study (animal welfare, captive
management, extraction from the wild, wildlife trade, and biological conservation).
G.A. Petrossian et al.
Journal of Environmental Management 354 (2024) 120141
9
“Animal Welfare Index” is better reected in the laws of South Africa, as
well as Colombia, Mexico, and the United States. The various conser-
vation concerns captured in the “Biological Conservation Index” were
relatively uniformly covered by all the countries across the continents,
so too were the “Captive Management” and “Extraction From the Wild”
indices, suggesting that there was no geographically discernible pattern
for these indices.
The supplementary analyses related to the number of seizures by
country (extracted from TRAFFIC’s database) and the number of CITES
import and export permits issued by these countries (extracted from
CITES) reveal interesting geographic patterns (Fig. 5). Recorded seizure
incidents (Fig. 5a) were highest in the United States (n =10,600), fol-
lowed by India (n =2462); China (n =1399); Indonesia (n =1134); and
Mexico (n =1064). Excluding the United States, the number of seizures
were highest in East and Southeast Asia. The same Southeast Asian
countries were also among those with the highest number of CITES
export permits issued (Fig. 5b), with Indonesia issuing 36,642 permits
during 2014–2020; China- 14,142; and Mexico - 2420. The remaining
top ve exporters included South Africa (with 22,252 export permits
issued) and Australia (n =18,433). This indicates that a notable number
of wild animals are presumably legally exported from the South and
Southeast Asia regions. Fig. 5c shows that, along with Australia (n =
6308) and South Africa (n =5646), the countries in the North, Central,
and South Americas are those that issued the highest number of import
permits, with the United States, Mexico, and Brazil issuing 45,000;
6212; and 5038 import permits, respectively.
3.3. Research question 3: When did these laws come into effect and what
are the temporal trends?
The legislation reviewed across the 11 countries was adopted as early
as the 1910s and spans the 2020s. There were no particular trends
observable in regard to the adoption of laws related to the ve key
indices (animal welfare, captive management, extraction from the wild,
biological conservation, and wildlife trade) over time. For example,
there were no categories of legislation that countries adopted prior to
others (e.g., countries did not adopt animal welfare legislation typically
prior to biological conservation). There are, however, clusters of legis-
lation implementation that occur across the countries. Countries appear
to have adopted legislation in bursts as opposed to continuously over the
years. For example, regarding commercial wildlife trade legislation
overall, several bursts of legislation covering the topics discussed can be
observed, such as in the US in the mid to late 1960s, in China between
the mid-1970s to early 1990s, then again from 2015 to the present, in
Ecuador from the early 1990s to 2010, and in Australia from around
2005 to 2010 (see Fig. 7). For animal welfare specically, there was a
cluster of legislation introduced addressing animal welfare across Brazil,
South Africa, the US, India, and Colombia that occurred during the late
1930s to early 1970s. More recently, there was an observable burst for
biological conservation as a prevalent theme of legislation appearing
after the adoption of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
However, the adoption of major international treaties - such as CITES,
CMS, and CBD - do not appear to be statistically tied temporally to any of
these bursts. When examining the overall number of laws for all coun-
tries by year, no statistically signicant correlations were discovered (r
=0.198, p >0.5). Neither were there signicantly different (mean)
number of laws developed pre- and post-CITES, CMS, and CBD
convention adoptions (CITES: t(49) =-0.352, p >05; CMS: t(49) =
-1.163, p >0.05; CBD: t(49) =-0.551, p >0.05).
3.4. Research question 4: What are the main gaps in current legislation
designed to address the commercial exploitation of wild animals (wild
animal extraction, captive breeding, and trade)?
The word cloud shown in Fig. 8 reveals several frequently occurring
themes from the analysis of gaps in current legislation related to the
commercial exploitation of wild animals that were shared by the 11
focal countries. The most frequently occurring term identied as a major
gap was “welfare” (n =17). This indicates that, collectively, there seem
to be signicant gaps in these laws (e.g., weaknesses, bottlenecks, or
conict of law), specically in relation to animal welfare. “Penalties” (n
=15), “regulation” (n =14), and “enforcement” (n =14) emerged as the
second, third, and fourth most frequently occurring themes from the
analysis of gaps shared by these laws, respectively. Other frequently
occurring themes included those related to “species” (n =12) broadly
dened, and the “poor[ly]” (n =12) and “lack” (n =8) of their “pro-
tection” (n =11), as well as those associated with broader “environ-
mental” (n =8) regulatory provisions that holistically capture the nature
of these crimes and their associated impacts.
A systematic content analysis of the gaps identied by the word
cloud revealed that those related to animal “welfare” shared some key
weaknesses, as captured in the descriptions below:
“The public health and animal welfare link is not covered …; for example,
it ignores coverage of zoonotic disease issues.” (United States: The, 1973
US Code 50 CFR Part 23)
Table 3
Correlations between specic components comprising the ve thematic categories.
Components Within Indices Animal Health Biodiversity Endangered Species Protected Area Protection of Species
Animal Health – – – – –
Biodiversity – – – – –
Ecosystem Preservation – .861** – – –
Endangered Species – – – –
Protected Area – .770* – – –
Protection of Species – .937** – –
Hunting Authorization/Permit – .859** – – –
Hunting/Capture .939* – – – –
Internal Trade – – – −.962* –
International Trade – – .861* .974**
Keeping of Live Animals – .980* .962* – –
** Correlation is signicant at the 0.01 level.
* Correlation is signicant at the 0.05 level.
=concepts within biological conservation index.
=concepts within wildlife trade index.
=concepts within animal welfare index.
=concepts within captive management index.
=concepts within extraction from the wild index.
G.A. Petrossian et al.
Journal of Environmental Management 354 (2024) 120141
10
“The law has animal ghting exemptions, which contradicts its own
denitions of “animal welfare”, “entertainment show”, and “unnec-
essary suffering”. (Peru: The, 2016 Animal Protection and Welfare
Law No. 30407)
“The law allows for sport hunting which violates the welfare of wildlife”
(Peru: The, 2011 Forest and Wildlife Law No. 29763)
“The code lacks a broad range of wildlife specic offenses related to
animal welfare such as transportation and captivity, or trade such as sale
of illegally acquired species or protected species.” (India: The Indian
Penal Code of 1860)
“This law is poorly enforced with inspections on animal welfare being
conducted in a piecemeal fashion, and many zoos go unmonitored.”
(Brazil: The, 1983 Federal Law No 7,173/1983)
There were also signicant gaps pertaining to the nature of the
“penalties” associated with the laws addressing species extraction from
the wild, captive management, and commercial trade of wild animals
(transportation and sale). The most common gaps shared by the coun-
tries as related to penalties were the inadequacy of the nes as a
deterrent mechanism, weakness of these penalties, and the outdated
nature of the laws pertaining to them. Examples of these gaps are pro-
vided in the excerpts below:
“This law has penalties restricted and capped to a maximum of one to two
years imprisonment with or without option of a ne. Fines are not
Fig. 4. The Global Biodiversity Index and performance on the ve key indices: wildlife trade, animal welfare, biological conservation, captive management, and
extraction from the wild for the 11 focal countries. The indices are based on the number of laws for each category.
G.A. Petrossian et al.
Journal of Environmental Management 354 (2024) 120141
11
specied in the law and the Adjustment of Fines Act applies specifying up
to a maximum of R80,000 ($4500)” (South Africa: The Animals
Protection Act No 71 of 1962) and “Penalties under this law attract a
low ne of R40,000 with the option of a maximum imprisonment of one
year”. (South Africa: Performing Animals Protection Act (No. 24 of
1935))
“This law is outdated with lenient penalties for wildlife-related offenses”
or “Penalties for offenses under this Act do not have minimum terms and
amounts, which means offenders can get away with light punishments”.
(Indonesia: Natural Resources Conservation Law (Act No. 5 of 1990))
“Penalties relating to wildlife crime-related offenses are relatively low.
(Imprisonment for a maximum of three (3) years). (Ecuador: The 2014
Comprehensive Organic Criminal Code (COIP) (R.O 180))
Lastly, the gaps as they pertained to “regulation” and “enforcement”
either discuss goals contrary to the species protection, such as in the
China example below; are vague in the provision of specic guidelines to
regulate wildlife law enforcement; or lack specic provisions pertaining
to the illegal possession of wildlife as pets. Examples of these are
included below:
“The law and its implementing regulations have put a putative emphasis
on wildlife utilization in encouraging captive breeding and expanding
opportunities for wildlife utilization, rather than protecting it.” (China:
The, 1988 Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Protection of
Wildlife)
“This law does not describe or provide guidelines and regulations for the
coordination of law enforcement agencies in enforcement.” (Colombia:
Law 2153 of 2021)
“This law lacks the regulations needed to prevent the trafcking and
illegal possession of wildlife as pets.”(Mexico: The, 2000 General
Wildlife Law)
4. Discussion
4.1. Key ndings
This is the rst comprehensive study to review the extent of national
legislation pertaining to the commercial exploitation of wild animals,
including their extraction from the wild, captive management,
Fig. 5. Geographic patterns of wildlife seizure incidents, and CITES import/export permits issued by the 11 focal countries. Data source: TRAFFIC trade database (for
seizure incidents) and CITES trade database (for imports and exports).
G.A. Petrossian et al.
Journal of Environmental Management 354 (2024) 120141
12
transport, and sale in 11 megadiverse countries around the world.
Specically, we sought to explore what legislation currently exists and
to delve deeper into its characteristics by examining when these laws
and their provisions came into effect, how these laws vary geographi-
cally, and identifying any of the main gaps in the legislation designed to
address the commercial exploitation of wild animals. Following our
investigation of four research questions, several key ndings have
emerged.
Over the past century, there has been an apparent increase in the
number of laws and their complexity (as indicated by the number of
provisions within them) pertaining to the commercial wildlife trade in
the world’s most biodiverse countries. We identied 95 laws with a total
of 560 provisions adopted since 1910 across the 11 focal countries
examined. The United States, Australia, and China had the highest
Fig. 6. Temporal mapping of legislation adoption by theme across the 11 focal countries
Note: Each individually-colored rectangle/block represents a keyword falling into one of the color-coded categories for a particular piece of legislation. For ease of
interpretation, all blocks are merged into the smallest amount of space per country. Colors together, therefore, represent either one piece of legislation with multiple
keywords and/or multiple pieces of legislation merged. Temporal categorizations are shown in decade sections. For reference, the Convention on the International
Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora (CITES), the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species (CMS) and the Convention on Biological Diversity
(CBD) adoption dates are also shown. Countries are sorted by biodiversity index ranking (highest ranked to lowest ranked). (For interpretation of the references to
color in this gure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)
Fig. 7. Temporal mapping of legislation adoption across the 11 focal countries.
G.A. Petrossian et al.
Journal of Environmental Management 354 (2024) 120141
13
number of provisions, respectively, while Mexico, India, and Brazil had
the fewest. It is noteworthy that a country’s level of biological diversity
(indicated by its Global Biodiversity Index) does not appear to be
correlated with the number of laws and provisions the country has in
place to address commercial wildlife trade or the volumes of interna-
tional commercial trade in CITES-listed species. This observation is
surprising because, in a sense, we had expected that biodiversity, being
such an essential resource for these countries and a source of national
identity, would also be one of the most guarded resources, maintained in
part through the application of relevant legislation and associated pro-
visions governing its use.
However, our study also reveals that the focus of these laws and
provisions for the world’s most biodiverse countries is not uniformly
distributed across different stages of the wildlife trade chain, such as
extraction, captive management, and transport and sale. For example,
far more provisions exist specically pertaining to species extraction
from the wild and commercial transportation and sale of wildlife
compared to those specically focused on captive management of wild
animals. Furthermore, laws focused on wildlife trade are not evenly
distributed across various key areas of concern, such as habitat protec-
tion, species conservation, and safeguarding animal welfare. For each of
the countries assessed, there are notably fewer laws that specically
address animal welfare in the context of commercial wildlife trade than
those focused on biological conservation. This observation is perhaps
not unexpected, considering that key factors, such as attitudes towards
wildlife and animal sentience, levels of consumption, political will,
enforcement, and capacity to deal with conscated wildlife, can vary
greatly between different countries (Wyatt et al., 2022). Furthermore,
from local to international scales, wildlife policy agendas and in-
terventions are often more focused on delivering the social goals of
biodiversity conservation, development, and poverty alleviation (Nie-
senbaum, 2019). Moreover, currently, the various international bodie-
s/agreements and legal instruments that have some inuence on wildlife
trade (such as CITES, IPBES, CBD) appear mostly to be focused on
regulating trade or attempting to ensure sustainability, and very few
international legal instruments appear to acknowledge sentience or the
intrinsic value of wildlife (Nyilas, 2021).
Of particular note is the relatively lower inclusion of animal welfare
considerations apparent across the proliferation of laws and provisions
related to the international commercial wildlife trade. This observation
raises multiple concerns that warrant attention relating to increasing
recognition, not only regarding the suffering experienced by individual
animals that are commercially traded due to an enhanced understanding
of animal sentience [research increasingly demonstrates the sentience of
wild animals, extending to taxonomic groups that have been previously
overlooked such invertebrates, shes, and reptiles (Lambert et al. 2021,
2022a, 2022b Caporale et al., 2005; Sigaud et al., 2023; Wyatt et al.,
2022)], but also in terms of the broader implications associated with the
One Health concept (One Health, n.d.). Poor animal welfare can have
adverse effects on public health (Bonilla-Aldana et al., 2020), livestock
(Fernandes et al., 2021), and economies (One Health, n.d.), under-
scoring the importance of addressing this aspect in wildlife trade regu-
lations. Yet practice and legislation do not always properly reect this
(Wyatt et al., 2022).
Likewise, it is of potential concern that the number of legislative
measures and provisions related to captive management (particularly
captive breeding) is comparatively lower when compared to the regu-
lations governing the extraction of wildlife from the wild and com-
mercial transportation and sale. From an animal welfare perspective,
this stage of the wildlife trade chain can include high concentrations of
animals, poor hygiene, and close contact with caretakers (e.g., Har-
rington et al., 2021) resulting in disease, malnourishment,
stress-induced behaviors, injuries, infected wounds, cannibalism, and
premature death (Baker et al., 2013; Hilderink and de Winter, 2021;
Robinson et al., 2015; Wyatt et al., 2022). Moreover, from a conserva-
tion perspective, commonly applied “sustainable solutions” to com-
mercial wildlife trade and use, such as commercial captive breeding and
ranching of wild animals, are not always as sustainable as intended,
given they may only be appropriate for a limited number of wild animal
species that t certain specic criteria (Tensen, 2016). It also risks the
introduction of invasive species (Hughes et al., 2023b) and genetic
pollution of wild populations, leading to the erasure of genetically
distinct populations if effective management is not in place (Auliya
et al., 2020).
Lastly, in addition to identifying countries that were quick to adopt
legislation focused on the various different aspects of the commercial
Fig. 8. Word cloud of key gaps identied in the legislation related to the commercial exploitation of wild animals of the 11 focal countries. The size of the word
indicates the frequency that the word appears in the text related to the gaps in legislation.
G.A. Petrossian et al.
Journal of Environmental Management 354 (2024) 120141
14
wildlife trade, and those that have lagged behind, our analysis of tem-
poral patterns in the emergence of legislation over time revealed that the
pattern of this proliferation is one characterized by clusters, or bursts of
legislative action. This pattern of policy change and growth of legal
jurisprudence in relation to wildlife law aligns with the prepositions of
the Punctuated Equilibrium Theory as applied by Baumgartner and
Jones (1993), which asserts that policies undergo periods of radical
change and long periods of development stagnation and stasis that
emerges and recedes. However, although some new legislation is
generally required at a national level when adopting international
treaties (such as CITES), our study indicates that the observed surges in
national legislation do not appear to be directly linked to the creation of
new international treaties. Instead, it appears that countries have been
pursuing their own unique trajectories in this regard. This aspect should
be taken into account when rening existing international policy forums
(e.g., as has been proposed by some for CITES) and creating new ones (e.
g., the proposed Pandemics Treaty).
It is also important to note that the political economy of wildlife
exploitation at a particular point in time is largely seen as a major in-
uence on the nature of animal welfare protection laws a country pro-
mulgates and enforces (Hårstad, 2023; Parlasca et al., 2023). Countries
and/or governments that have a more permissive wildlife exploitation
and utilization agenda often ordinarily put emphasis on encouraging
extraction, captive breeding, hunting, consumption, and trade, often at
the expense of animal welfare protections. They often do this by main-
taining wide exemptions for exploitation in law (e.g., South Africa,
Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia), exceptions on the use of wildlife (e.g., USA and
Mexico), weak monitoring or evaluation of the legal framework, or
through fragmented law enforcement coordination frameworks (e.g.,
Indonesia and Mexico).
4.2. Policy implications
The extent of the laws identied in this study may seem compre-
hensive. However, it is important to acknowledge that the sheer number
of laws and their complexity (indicated by the number of provisions
within laws) should not solely be relied upon as an indicator of their
adequacy and suitability for their intended purpose. For example, in-
consistencies between the variety of provincial, national, and interna-
tional legislation relating to the commercial captive breeding of lions in
South Africa have been criticized for creating inconsistencies and “legal
loopholes” for criminal actors to exploit (de Waal et al., 2022). Likewise,
the number of laws does not necessarily correspond directly to how well
those laws are implemented or enforced, or their efcacy (UNODC,
2020).
While wildlife-related laws exist on paper, the provisions related to
the actual mechanisms of enforcement, the strength and proportionality
of the penalties, and the regulatory provisions are not always well-
dened and developed to fully address the problems of wildlife extrac-
tion, captive management, transport, and sale (Sollund and Maher,
2015). Capacity levels, the extent of political will to address IWT, and
political limitations to enforcement, mean that there is also often huge
variation in the ability of countries to enforce wildlife trade laws (‘t
Sas-Rolfes et al., 2019; Hamers et al., 2023). The lack of monitoring of
wildlife trade across scales from local to international also presents a
major barrier to the legal protection of wildlife (Hughes et al., 2023a).
Corruption can also facilitate IWT while undermining the efcacy of
laws and the trust in governments to enforce them (Van Uhm and
Moreto, 2018). Furthermore, previous analysis has shown that penalties
related to wildlife crime are highly variable globally, with nes being
the predominant response, and that major gaps exist in our knowledge of
whether and how these penalties are actually imposed and how effective
they are (Hutchinson et al., 2023). In this regard, the relatively lower
inclusion of references to “penalties”, “regulation”, and “enforcement”
in the laws and provisions analyzed in this study is concerning and
warrants further scrutiny to assess the extent to which this is impeding
conservation and animal welfare policy goals.
Moreover, it must also be fully recognized that just because com-
mercial trade in a given species is legal or certied, it does not neces-
sarily mean it is safe, humane, or sustainable at a given point in time
(Hughes et al., 2023a). Related to this fact, geopolitical variations
among different stakeholders and cultural differences inuence what
laws should seek to achieve and prioritize, which should also be taken
into account (Balane et al., 2020; Ribeiro et al., 2022). In particular, this
can lead to the emergence of competing goals – for example, in relation
to economic development, equitability, conservation, and animal
welfare-focused outcomes. Whilst acknowledging the complexity of this
situation, the many varied approaches to wildlife utilization that are
promoted in policy can broadly be categorized into two main camps:
those that are predominantly focused on improving regulation of com-
mercial consumptive use of wildlife and those that prioritize
non-consumptive wildlife uses.
The ongoing polarized solution-focused debates among academics,
NGOs and policymakers as it pertains to biodiversity conservation
include, on one side, those who call for an expansion characterized by
improved regulation and monitoring of the commercial trade in wild
animals (free market approach) to make it more sustainable (e.g., Park
et al., 2022; Roe and Lee, 2021); and on the other side, those that call for
a reduction, via increased prohibition or phase-out (as a more conser-
vative approach) as a conservation and development tool (e.g., D’Cruze
et al., 2020). With regards to animal welfare, similarly, there are those
who broadly call for improved regulation and monitoring of the com-
mercial trade in wild animals to make it more humane (e.g., bigger
cages, improved diet, and veterinary care) (e.g., Beekmans et al., 2023;
Mellor et al., 2021); on the other side, there are those that, instead, call
for reducing and/or eliminating the consumptive utilization of wild
animals in trade (subsistence use only), and prioritizing
non-consumptive alternatives as a default approach that is more animal
welfare inclusive (e.g., Moorhouse et al., 2017, 2020; D’Cruze et al.,
2020b; Green et al., 2022).
4.3. Recommendations
Irrespective of one’s standpoint, it is evident that relevant existing
legislation and provisions would greatly benet from adopting a
streamlined and interconnected approach that acknowledges the ne-
cessity to address and mitigate any potential adverse impacts stemming
from the commercial trade in wildlife. Specically, there is a need to
ensure that both biodiversity conservation and animal welfare are
considered in wildlife trade related policies, whilst also ensuring that
these policies are in lock-step at a provincial, national, and international
level (Ribeiro et al., 2022; Nijman et al., 2019). Likewise, current in-
ternational policy agreements (such as CITES, CMS and CBD) have an
important role to play, but are also in need of review and revision to
safeguard animal welfare. However, as our temporal analysis of legis-
lation adoption highlights, this will not necessarily guarantee an im-
mediate cascade effect at the national level.
With regard to conservation, exploitation of wild animals to meet the
demands of growing local and global markets was recently ranked
among ve key drivers of harmful ecosystem change in the most recent
global assessment of biodiversity and ecosystem services (Watson et al.,
2019). This underscores the fact that, overall, countries are failing to
meet global biodiversity targets. To have a chance of meeting global
initiatives, such as United Nation’s 30 ×30 – which aims to reduce by
half the risk of species extinctions across all taxonomic and functional
groups, safeguard genetic diversity of wild species with at least 90 % of
genetic diversity within all species maintained (UNCBD United Nations
Convention of Biological Diversity, 2021) – urgent legislative action is
required.
Even though it is encouraging that biological conservation-related
terms have featured more prominently in the existing legislations and
provisions related to commercial wildlife trade, the scope of the
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Journal of Environmental Management 354 (2024) 120141
15
commercial trade in wild animal species is growing in scale and
complexity (Watson et al., 2019), particularly in terms of species,
products, consumers, platforms (e.g., social media), and pushes by
various government-backed initiatives (e.g., Scheffers et al., 2019;
MacDonald et al., 2021; Hinsley et al., 2020; Harrington et al., 2021;
Martin et al., 2018). Consequently, there is a need to ensure that rele-
vant wildlife laws are amended appropriately to keep pace with the
growing and emerging commerce challenges and opportunities in legal
development to elevate the status of wildlife protection in law.
With regard to animal welfare, animal sentience and the “rights of
nature” provisions have been a key legal development that considerably
enhances the legal status of animals as enshrined in constitutional pro-
visions or proclaimed in legal jurisprudence in several countries covered
in this study. However, despite the protections promised by this legal
status of personhood, there remain challenges in streamlining this legal
status in the other existing animal welfare, captivity, and exploitation-
specic laws. Some legal frameworks around the world currently
conate conservation and the economic exploitation of species. For
example, Peru recognizes animal sentience and the intrinsic value of
animals while, at the same time, providing a legal framework that fa-
cilitates the permitting of sport hunting and consumptive wildlife use
(Organic Law for the Sustainable Use of Natural Resources Law No.
26821). The legal standard offered by personhood is largely undermined
by overt wildlife exploitation laws when it is not clear which of these
two constitutional norms takes priority (“best interests of the animal”
standard versus “commercial interests to exploit” the same animal). To
meet this challenge, we suggest that wildlife exploitation laws in
countries recognizing the sentience and intrinsic value of animals be
streamlined to enhance the welfare and status of animals in statute with
considerations to necessary exemptions for wildlife management
methods, such as problem animal control or invasive species control.
In terms of future research, it is important to note that our study
provides insights into the number of laws and adequacy of provisions
(the extent and scope), but it does not provide information on their
effectiveness and how well these laws are implemented. Consequently,
to build on our initial ndings, follow-up research is required to delve
deeper into the degree to which these laws and their provisions are
characterized by gaps, are applicable for their intended purpose, and
whether robust mechanisms exist to ensure that they are effectively
enforced across all of the various phases of the trade chain. In particular,
understanding the complexity of laws, enforcement and efcacy across
geographies and in relation to different geopolitical settings would be an
important next step for research. We also call for increased measures and
vigilance to address the lack of political will and corruption, alongside
efforts to strengthen law enforcement. Ensuring that trade is adequately
monitored at multiple levels from local to subnational, national and
international, is also required to increase understanding of the drivers
and trends in trade, and to assess the impact and efcacy of laws and
enforcement (Nijman et al., 2019).
In addition, our study focuses only on certain impacts of commercial
wildlife trade on terrestrial wild fauna – namely, conservation and an-
imal welfare-related issues. Other concerns, such as public health,
equitability, indigenous peoples, and local communities (IPLCs) rights to
their environment, along with laws that address the growing commer-
cial trade of freshwater and marine wildlife, fell outside the current
scope of this study but are also in need of similar research attention.
Lastly, our analyses did not assess the extent to which countries intro-
duced legislative instruments as a result of CITES-related requirements,
and neither did it assess whether the upticks in the adoption of legisla-
tion are related to external phenomena, such as pandemics (e.g., SARS,
MERS, COVID-19). Future research can, thus, explore these questions.
5. Conclusions
At a time of accelerating biodiversity crisis and growing concerns
over the negative impacts of commercial wildlife use on individual
animals’ welfare, biodiversity, public health, and the economy, there is
an urgent need to effectively respond to harmful, unsustainable, and
illegal activities related to wildlife. In this research, we set out to explore
the landscape of laws as they pertained to wildlife extraction, captive
breeding, and sale. We strategically selected 11 megadiverse countries
(Mittermeier et al., 1997) as these were the countries that ranked among
the highest on the Global Biodiversity Index. Geopolitical variations
among different stakeholders and cultural differences inuence what
laws should seek to achieve, including as they pertain to issues of con-
servation and animal welfare concerns. This can lead to the emergence
of competing goals – for example, in relation to economic development,
equitability, conservation, and animal welfare-focused outcomes. These
different stances aside, our research ndings suggest that although a
number of national legal frameworks exist, the distribution of provisions
within these legislations varies across different aspects of protection and
components of the wildlife trade chain. Considering the ongoing sub-
stantial expansion of the international commercial wildlife trade in
terms of its scope and scale (estimated by some to reach USD 300 billion
annually, excluding timber), as well as the growing acknowledgment of
the potential adverse effects it can have on biodiversity and individual
animals’ welfare, there is a need for reviews and amendments to ll any
legal gaps, streamline legislation, and reduce any legal loopholes to
enhance the protection of traded and captive wildlife. Effective protec-
tion of wild animal populations and the welfare of individual animals in
commercial trade can only be possible when international and intra-
national regulations work in sync. To meet this challenge, we suggest
that efforts are made to ensure that national and international laws are
aligned to protect wildlife.
Funding
This research project was funded by World Animal Protection and
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Ofce of Advancement of
Research.
Declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests. Neil D’Cruze holds the
position of Head of Wildlife Research at World Animal Protection, an
international animal welfare-focused NGO. Angie Elwin holds the po-
sition of Wildlife Research Manager. Our results pertaining to this study
were in no way inuenced by either the funding source, or our own
personal views on conservation or animal welfare.
Generative AI
The authors did not use generative AI or AI-assisted technologies in
the writing or editing of this manuscript.
Research data
Data for this research, including the original text of the laws used in
the analyses, are available upon request.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Gohar A. Petrossian: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal
analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Visualization, Writing – original
draft, Writing – review & editing. Angie Elwin: Conceptualization,
Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Validation, Writing
– original draft, Writing – review & editing. Monique Sosnowski: Data
curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Visualization,
Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. Thanaphon Nun-
phong: Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review &
G.A. Petrossian et al.
Journal of Environmental Management 354 (2024) 120141
16
editing. Ho-Tu Chiang: Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation,
Methodology, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review &
editing. Jim Karani Riungu: Investigation, Writing – original draft,
Writing – review & editing. Neil D’Cruze: Conceptualization, Funding
acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Super-
vision, Validation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing nancial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to inuence
the work reported in this paper.Two authors are employed by the animal
welfare organisation World Animal Protection (NDC holds the position
of Head of Animal Welfare and Research; AE is Wildlife Research
Manager). Our results pertaining to this study were in no way inuenced
by our own personal views in animal welfare.
Data availability
Data will be made available on request.
Acknowledgments
We thank World Animal Protection for supporting this research
project. We are grateful to our reviewers, as well as Mark Auliya, Alice
Hughes, and Clifford Warwick, for useful comments that helped improve
this manuscript.
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