Morton, O. orcid.org/0000-0001-5483-4498, Nijman, V. and Edwards, D.P. orcid.org/0000-0001-8562-3853 (2024) International wildlife trade quotas are characterized by high compliance and coverage but insufficient adaptive management. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 8. pp. 2048-2057.
Abstract
Effective management of international wildlife trade is crucial to ensure sustainability. Quotas are a common trade management tool and specify an annual number of individuals to be exported, yet at present there is no global assessment of quota coverage and compliance. Using over 7,000 country–year specific reptile quotas established under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) covering 343 species, we quantify quota coverage, compliance, trade trends pre-quota and post-quota setting and whether quotas likely represent adaptive management. Quotas predominantly concerned live wild-sourced reptiles, with only 6.6% of live non-zero quotas exceeded and 4.5% of zero quotas subverted. For 62.3% of species, quotas were established higher than pre-quota trade, with traded volumes post-quota mainly unchanged or higher than pre-quota establishment, thus potentially facilitating sustainable trade. Over 38% of quota series of species remained at the same level each year, with the longest-running quotas proportionately updated the least, indicating that many quotas do not change adaptively in response to changing threats to species through time. Greater specificity in exactly what quotas cover, justification for unchanged quotas and transparency over quota determination are needed to ensure that high compliance equates to sustainable use.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 The Authors. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Keywords: | Conservation biology |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > School of Biosciences (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 14 Nov 2024 09:22 |
Last Modified: | 14 Nov 2024 09:22 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41559-024-02531-4 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Science and Business Media LLC |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/s41559-024-02531-4 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:219497 |