Main data files for Marshall et al. Tracing Trade: mapping the global dimensions of US wildlife imports

Main Data for Marshall et al. Tracing Trade: mapping the global dimensions of US wildlife imports, that aimed to describe the patterns in sourcing and origin of wildlife trade present in 20 years of LEMIS wildlife import records.

Explanations of the data files are the same as Marshall, Benjamin; Alamshah, Aubrey; Cardoso, Pedro; Cassey, Phill; Chekunov, Sebastian; Eskew, Evan A.; et al. (2024). Main data files for Marshall et al. Almost 30,000 wild species: how much do we really know about legal wildlife trade?. figshare. Dataset. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.25041584.v1. The MainDataFileDetails.txt covers the description of the main LEMIS data.

The datasets presented here (_distributionsAdded) differ mainly by the addition of distribution added for the main vertebrate groups and arachnids. Those additional fields include allDistISO2 that includes all country ISO2 codes the species is present, and nativeOrigin that describes whether the listed origin of the trade is within the list of resident ISO2 codes.

Also included are files required to remake the distribution datasets from the original release of the LEMIS data. How these files interact and were used is described in the code workflow, namely through the _targets file describing the order and relation of functions. All code used to summarise these data available at https://github.com/BenMMarshall/mapTradeLEMIS and archived at Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14982543.

As with previous descriptions of the LEMIS data, users of this data should be aware that the data still contains errors even after the correction of names and removal of outliers. Caution should be exercised when using and interpreting this trade dataset. The associated publication and supplementary discussion contains details on the limitations of this data.

Further details on the cleaning of the pre-2014 data can be found Eskew, E. A., White, A. M., Ross, N., Smith, K. M., Smith, K. F., Rodríguez, J. P., ... & Daszak, P. (2020). United States wildlife and wildlife product imports from 2000–2014. Scientific Data, 7(1), 22. and Eskew, E. A., White, A. M., Ross, N., Smith, K. M., Smith, K. F., Rodríguez, J. P., ... & Daszak, P. (2019). United States LEMIS wildlife trade data curated by EcoHealth Alliance. Zenodo Dataset, 10. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.3565869

Data presented here builds upon previous data releases:

Eskew, E. A., White, A. M., Ross, N., Smith, K. M., Smith, K. F., Rodríguez, J. P., Zambrana-Torrelio, C., Karesh, W. B., & Daszak, P. (2019a). United States LEMIS wildlife trade data curated by EcoHealth Alliance. Zenodo Dataset. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3565869

Eskew, E. A., White, A. M., Ross, N., Smith, K. M., Smith, K. F., Rodríguez, J. P., Zambrana-Torrelio, C., Karesh, W. B., & Daszak, P. (2020). United States wildlife and wildlife product imports from 2000–2014. Scientific Data, 7(1), 22. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-020-0354-5

Marshall, B. M., Alamshah, A. L., Cardoso, P., Cassey, P., Chekunov, S., Eskew, E. A., Fukushima, C. S., García-Díaz, P., Gore, M. L., Lockwood, J. L., Rhyne, A. L., Sinclair, J. S., Thomas Strine, C., Stringham, O. C., Tlusty, M. F., Valdez, J. W., Watters, F., & Hughes, A. C. (2025). The magnitude of legal wildlife trade and implications for species survival. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(2). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2410774121