We map the countries and ecosystems of origin behind two decades of U.S. wildlife imports, revealing major gaps in global wildlife trade data and highlighting source regions facing the greatest biodiversity pressure from U.S. demand.
Using two decades of U.S. wildlife import records (2000–2022), we show that the United States traded over 21,000 species and 2.85 billion individuals, with more than half of individuals from most taxa sourced from the wild. The scale of legal trade far exceeds prior assessments, limiting decision-makers' ability to gauge its impact on species survival.
A 2016 U.S. rule restricted trade in 20 salamander genera to prevent introduction of the fungal pathogen Bsal. Analyzing import data from 1999–2021, we found the rule reduced trade in the targeted taxa, but many other amphibian genera and species now known to carry Bsal continue to be imported in large quantities, leaving a persistent disease introduction risk.
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.