The illegal wildlife trade causes enormous welfare suffering from capture through transport to sale. Understanding the scale of this crisis motivates effective action to protect wild animals.
The wildlife trade causes welfare suffering of extraordinary scale and severity. Animals captured from the wild experience the terror of capture, extreme confinement during transport, deprivation of food and water, exposure to extreme temperatures, and in many cases, injuries from overcrowding and rough handling. The majority die before reaching a buyer. Those that survive face lifetimes in inadequate captive conditions maintained by buyers who typically lack the knowledge to care for specialist wild species. The welfare of individual animals in the wildlife trade is devastating, and the aggregate suffering across millions of individuals annually represents one of the largest human-caused welfare crises. Addressing the trade requires simultaneous action on supply through law enforcement and on demand through consumer behaviour change.