Trends in the global trade of live CITES-listed raptors: Trade volumes, spatiotemporal dynamics and conservation implications

The global legal wildlife trade is worth US$4-20 billion to the world’s economy every year. Raptors frequently enter the wildlife trade for use as display animals, by falconers or hobbyists for sport and recreation. Using data from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora’s (CITES) Trade Database, we examined trends in the global, legal commercial trade of CITES-listed raptors between 1975-2020. Overall 272 raptor species were traded, totalling 188,149 individuals, with the number of traded raptors increasing over time. Hybrid Falcons (N = 50,366) were most commonly traded, comprising more than a third of the global diurnal CITES-listed raptor trade, followed by Gyrfalcons (Falco rusticolus; N = 30,510), Saker Falcons (F. cherrug; N = 21,679), Peregrine Falcons (F. peregrinus; N = 13,390) and Northern White-faced Owls (Ptilopsis leucotis; N = 6,725). More than half of wild-caught diurnal raptors were classified as globally threatened. The United Kingdom was the largest exporter of live raptors and the United Arab Emirates was the largest importer. More affluent countries were likely to import more raptors than those less affluent. Larger-bodied diurnal species were traded more relative to their smaller-bodied conspecifics. Following the introduction of the European Union’s Wild Bird Trade Ban in 2005, the number of traded wild-caught raptors declined. Despite its limitations, the CITES Trade Database provides an important baseline of the legal trade of live raptors for commercial purposes. However, better understanding of illegal wildlife trade networks and smuggling routes, both on-the-ground and online, are essential for future conservation efforts.

Methods
Trade data for all CITES-listed raptor species were downloaded from the open-access CITES Trade Database (https://trade.cites.org/) on 21st November 2021, using a compiled Comparative Tabulation Table from UNEP/WCMC. The following search terms were used to filter the CITES trade data: “Year Range” was set to include all records between 1975 to 2020, “Source” was set to “ALL”, “Purpose” was set to “COMMERCIAL” denoted by the letter (T) and “Trade Terms” was set to “LIVE” which filtered trade records for only live birds. The “Source” variable relates to the original source of the specimens traded (CITES Secretariat and UNEP-WCMC 2022) and allows the data set to be subset by, but not limited to: specimens bred in captivity (denoted by the letter “C”), specimens bred in captivity for commercial purposes (“D”), specimens taken from the wild (“W”) and ranched specimens including those that are reared in a controlled environment, taken as eggs or juveniles from the wild, which would otherwise have a low chance of survival to adulthood (“R”) (CITES Secretariat and UNEP-WCMC 2022). For the purposes of this study, we combined all records where the “Source” was denoted either by: “C” or “D” and hereafter refer to these as ‘Captive-bred’, and “W” or “R” hereafter ‘Wild-caught’. Taxonomic filtering was applied using the “Search by Taxon” function. The taxonomic orders “FALCONIFORMES” and “STRIGIFORMES” were used to obtain trade records for species within these orders. Species within the families Accipitridae, Cathartidae, Falconidae, Panionidae and Sagittariidae are pooled under the order “FALCONIFORMES” on the CITES Trade Database, and those in the families Strigidae and Tytonidae are pooled under the order “STRIGIFORMES”. For consistency between subgroups, all taxonomies were standardised to species-level, following the Handbook of Birds of the World and BirdLife Taxonomic Checklist v6 (http://datazone.birdlife.org/species/taxonomy). Following geopolitical changes since 1975, we pooled trade records under the former “Serbia and Montenegro” (denoted by ISO Alpha-2 code: CS ex-YU) with records under “Serbia” (RS). Other geopolitical country name changes included “Former Czechoslovakia” (non-ISO code ZC), “Former East Germany” (DD) and “Former Soviet Union” (SU). Trade records under these names were pooled with data for “Czech Republic” (CZ), “Germany” (DE) and “Russian Federation” (RU), respectively.