Indonesia is the World's Largest Exporter of Wild Animals

Indonesia is the world's largest exporter of wild animals. This is recorded in the research report *International Socioeconomic Inequality Drives Trade Patterns in the Global Wildlife Market*, compiled by Jia Huan Liew et al., a research team from Hong Kong and Singapore (May 2021).

According to the report, during the period 1998-2018, Indonesia exported approximately 71 million wild animals to dozens of countries, the highest compared to other exporting countries as shown in the graph.

The United States, besides being the 8th largest exporter, is also the world's number one importer of wild animals. They are recorded to have purchased approximately 204 million wild animals from various countries during the period 1998-2018.

Other major buyers include France, Italy, Singapore, Martinique, Hong Kong, Mexico, Japan, Germany, and China, each importing wild animals in the range of 9 million to 28 million during the same period.

Jia Huan Liew et al. obtained these figures from the database of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), an international convention related to the control of trade in wild animals and plants.

CITES contains commitments to protect approximately 1,500 animal species and 900 plant species. However, the data recorded here is limited to 12 groups of endangered animals that are most widely traded globally.

These animal groups include several types of birds, fish, shellfish, amphibians, anthozoa (such as anemones, soft and hard corals), arachnida (spiders and scorpions), hydrozoa (such as jellyfish and fire corals), insects, mammals (such as orangutans), reptiles, sharks/rays, and snails.

Jia Huan Liew et al. also noted that this data is incomplete because CITES only records the legal trade of wild animals.

"This raises questions about the broader international wildlife market, including illegal trade and trade in non-endangered animals, i.e., species not listed in CITES," they said.

"Dangerous practices in the wildlife trade, such as unsustainable harvesting and the trade of zoonotic disease host animals, pose a real threat to global biodiversity and serve as a pathway for the transmission of potentially harmful pathogens. This requires appropriate policy intervention," they stated.