The U.S. market for imported wildlife not listed in the CITES multilateral treaty

CITES regulates trade in a subset of at-risk species, but most wildlife imported into the U.S. isn’t covered by the treaty at all. We compared U.S. imports of CITES-listed and non-CITES-listed live wildlife and found non-listed imports involve 3.6 times more species and 11 times the trade quantity, exposing a major gap in international trade monitoring.