**Thousands of #species are traded globally with inadequate traceability**

Global legal #wildlife trade '97-2016 (both CITES and non-CITES listed) averaged US$220 billion/yr – 10 x annual trade in #trafficked wildlife

But most research is on #illegal / CITES-listed trade...

Paper by @HKUSBS researchers analyses 20 years of UN trade data, finding that excess wildlife is traded under broad codes that only specify taxonomic Class

>20% of #seafood, #furniture & #fashion is declared as “Fish”, “Tropical wood”, “Other furs” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2351989421000056

Trade in certain #wildlifetrade categories is conducted mostly via broad codes only denoting taxonomic Class – e.g. Traditional #Medicine (83%) & #pets (95%).

@CITES does not list many #songbirds, #fish, #trees or #plants, many of which are traded as pets, furniture, #TCM

For example, the “Live #reptile” code in the pets category includes 10,000 #snake, #lizard, #turtle and #crocodilian species, only ~10% of which are documented by CITES

CITES only lists 162 fish species – leaving thousands to be traded untraceably as pet “Live ornamental fish”

**Precise records of traded wildlife is important to mitigate species #overexploitation.**

Though CITES tracks trade in 35,800 species, many are traded with no #traceability.

**With better documentation we can preemptively identify over-exploitation of wildlife.**