Global Wildlife Trade Involves More Than 107,000 Species, Double Previous Estimates, Study Finds

The global trade in wild animals, plants and fungi involves far more species than anyone had counted before, according to a major new study published in the journal Science Advances on October 30, 2026, and the researchers behind it say the true scale of the trade may still be hidden by gaps in the data. The study, led by Professor Alice Hughes of the University of Melbourne and carried out by a team of more than 20 researchers, puts the number of non-domesticated species used or traded around the world at 107,356, more than double the figure of about 50,000 given in the last big global assessment, and it warns that for most of those species there is little or no information about how many are taken, where they come from, or whether the trade can continue without driving them towards extinction. The finding matters because wildlife trade is already recognised as one of the main drivers of biodiversity loss, yet the systems meant to watch over it cover only a small slice of what is actually bought and sold, from live pets and ornamental plants to timber, seafood, traditional medicine and food, and the study’s authors argue that without a far more complete picture, governments cannot know which species are in danger until it is too late. This is the story of what the researchers counted, how they counted it, and what their numbers mean for the wild species caught up in a trade worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year, as reported in the study and in coverage of it, with the global wildlife trade 107000 species Science Advances study now the clearest measure yet of a market far bigger than previously thought.

1. What the study found

The headline finding of the study is a single number that rewrites the accepted picture of the wildlife trade: at least 107,356 species of wild animals, plants and fungi are used or traded worldwide, a total the authors describe as the first comprehensive estimate of its kind across all three groups, and one that is more than twice the roughly 50,000 species identified in the 2022 assessment by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, known as IPBES. The researchers reached the figure by combining data from wildlife trade monitoring programmes, national management systems and published research, rather than relying on any single database, and they say the result shows that earlier estimates missed huge parts of the trade because they drew on narrower sources and failed to keep up with fast-changing markets, including the rapid growth of online sales. The study, titled “The true scale of global wildlife trade is obscured by data gaps”, was published in Science Advances on October 30, 2026, and its authors include researchers from the University of Melbourne, the University of Glasgow, the University of Sheffield and other institutions, with Professor Alice Hughes of the University of Melbourne’s School of BioSciences as lead author and postdoctoral researcher Benjamin Marshall of the University of Glasgow among the core team.

1.1 The new count: 107,356 species

The total of 107,356 species breaks down into 47,685 animal species and at least 49,723 plant species, with fungi making up the remainder, and the researchers stress that even this much larger figure is likely to be an underestimate because vast areas of international commerce remain poorly monitored or entirely undocumented. The animal figure alone is striking: the study reports that the traded animal species include 42 per cent of all described vertebrate species, a share that shows how deeply the trade reaches into the animal kingdom rather than being limited to a small set of familiar targets such as elephants, tigers and pangolins, which the researchers note represent only a small fraction of the broader market. The plant total is at least 49,723 species, and the use of “at least” matters, because the authors found that plant trade in particular is poorly recorded, with many species moving through markets for timber, medicine, food and decoration without appearing in the databases that are supposed to track them. The researchers also confirmed commercial trade involving at least 16,829 animal species, a narrower count that covers trade confirmed as commercial rather than all recorded use, and they say the gap between the confirmed commercial figure and the full 107,356 total is itself a measure of how much of this trade happens without proper records.

1.2 How it compares with the old estimate

The previous benchmark of about 50,000 species came from the IPBES assessment published in 2022, which was the most authoritative global estimate available until now, and the new study more than doubles it, a change the authors attribute not to a sudden explosion in trade but to better data and a wider net that catches trade previous assessments overlooked. One vivid example given in coverage of the study shows the scale of the miss: the number of butterfly species recorded in trade alone exceeded the earlier estimate for all traded terrestrial invertebrates combined, which means that a single group of insects, counted properly for the first time, outnumbered what the old assessment had assumed for every land invertebrate put together. The researchers say past estimates failed to keep up with changes in how wildlife is bought and sold, above all the boom in the online exotic pet trade, where sellers can offer spider eggs for posting across the world or arrange to smuggle reptiles onto planes with a few clicks, and where new research papers tracking species sold online for decoration have only recently begun to reveal the volume involved. The comparison also carries a warning, because if the old figure was wrong by a factor of two, then the policies built on it, from conservation priorities to trade rules, were drawn from a picture of the trade that was far smaller than reality.

2. How the researchers reached the number

The team did not set out to count animals in markets or inspect shipments at borders, and instead built its estimate by pulling together the many separate systems that already record wildlife trade, from international monitoring programmes to national databases, and then checking where those systems overlap, where they contradict each other and, most importantly, where they leave holes. The approach was deliberately broad: rather than trusting one source, the researchers combined cross-sector data on trade monitoring, national management records and newer studies of online markets, and they treated a species as traded when it appeared in use or trade across those combined sources, which is why the total is so much higher than figures drawn from any single database. The work involved more than 20 researchers, and the authors describe the result as the first comprehensive estimate of species used and traded across plants, animals and fungi, a claim that rests on the breadth of the sources rather than on any single new survey. The method also exposed the limits of the underlying data, because the datasets the team relied on are uneven, with some countries keeping detailed public records and others keeping almost none, so the final number is presented as a minimum rather than a finished count.

2.1 Bringing fragmented datasets together

The central problem the researchers faced was fragmentation, because information about wildlife trade is scattered across many different systems that were never designed to work together, and Professor Hughes said that despite wildlife trade being a well-established driver of biodiversity loss, information on the extent and sustainability of trade remains incomplete and highly fragmented. One of the most important sources was the United States Law Enforcement Management Information System, known as LEMIS, which alone records more than 21,000 animal species, and which accounted for 27.5 per cent of the traded animal species that appeared uniquely in its dataset, meaning that more than a quarter of the animal species in the study were found only in American records and in no other database the team examined. That finding shows both the value and the weakness of the current system: a single country’s records can reveal thousands of species that no one else is tracking, but it also means that the global picture depends heavily on a few well-documented sources while many countries lack standardised, public trade records altogether. The team also drew on the appendices of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, known as CITES, and on national management systems, and the way these sources failed to line up with each other became one of the study’s most important results in its own right.

2.2 The online trade blind spot

A large part of the undercount, the researchers say, comes from the way wildlife is now bought and sold online, where trade has moved faster than the systems meant to monitor it, and where sellers can reach buyers in any country without passing through the checkpoints and paperwork that traditional trade generates. Coverage of the study describes sellers offering to post spider eggs across the world or to sneak reptiles onto planes, and the researchers drew on newer research papers that have tracked species sold online for decoration, a market that barely existed in the data used for earlier estimates and that has grown quickly as social media and messaging apps have made it easier to advertise rare animals and plants. The online trade is hard to measure because listings appear and disappear quickly, sellers use coded language and pictures rather than scientific names, and many transactions cross borders in small parcels that customs systems are not built to catch, so the species involved often never appear in any official record. The authors argue that this blind spot is one of the reasons the true scale of trade is still hidden, and that any monitoring system which ignores online sales will keep missing a large and growing share of the market.

3. What is actually being traded

The 107,356 species in the study cover almost every kind of wild organism that people use, from the animals kept as pets and the plants grown for decoration to the fish eaten as food, the trees cut for timber, the fungi gathered for medicine and the many species harvested for traditional remedies, and the breadth of that list is itself one of the study’s main points. The trade is not only about rare and famous animals, and the researchers found that the familiar images of the wildlife trade, ivory, tiger parts and pangolin scales, describe only a small part of a market that reaches into tens of thousands of species most people have never heard of, including huge numbers of plants, insects, fish and fungi. The study counts species as traded when they are used or traded in any form, which means the total includes subsistence use and local markets as well as international commercial shipments, and that wide definition is part of why the number is so much larger than earlier estimates that focused mainly on the international trade in animals. Understanding what is traded matters because different parts of the trade carry different risks, and a species sold as a pet faces different pressures from one harvested for timber or medicine.

3.1 Animals, plants and fungi

Animals make up 47,685 of the species in the study, a total that includes mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish and invertebrates, and the researchers report that the traded animal species include 42 per cent of all described vertebrate species, a proportion that underlines how much of the world’s known animal diversity is touched by trade in one form or another. Plants account for at least 49,723 species, the largest single group in the total, and fungi make up the rest, with the authors noting that plant and fungal trade is especially poorly documented, so the real numbers for those groups may be higher still. The study’s coverage of all three groups is what makes it different from earlier work, which tended to focus on animals and on the relatively small number of species listed under international agreements, and the inclusion of plants and fungi at this scale is a major reason the total doubled. The researchers also found that the trade in invertebrates had been badly underestimated, with the butterfly example showing that a single insect group could exceed the old estimate for all traded land invertebrates, a result that suggests many other invertebrate groups, from spiders and beetles to corals and molluscs, may also be far more heavily traded than the records show.

3.2 From pets and medicine to timber and food

The uses driving the trade are as varied as the species themselves, and the study covers animals kept as exotic pets, plants sold as ornaments, timber and other wood products, seafood and other wild foods, ingredients for traditional and modern medicine, and species collected for decoration, research and other purposes. The exotic pet trade has grown rapidly online, and it is one of the markets the researchers say older estimates failed to capture, with buyers ordering rare reptiles, amphibians, spiders and birds through websites and social media, often with little regard for whether the animals were taken from the wild or bred in captivity. Timber and plant trade moves enormous volumes of material, including many species that are harvested without any assessment of whether the harvest is sustainable, while the trade in wild fungi and medicinal plants involves thousands of species gathered from forests and grasslands, often by people who depend on the income but have no information about how much can safely be taken. Seafood is another major part of the picture, with wild-caught fish and other marine species traded in huge quantities, and the study’s authors point out that for most of these species there is no data on quantity and origins, let alone the population-level data needed to judge whether the trade poses a risk to their survival.

4. Legal trade dwarfs illegal trade

One of the study’s most surprising findings is that most of the wildlife trade is legal, and that the legal trade is far larger than the illegal trade that usually dominates headlines and public debate, a result that challenges the common assumption that the problem is mainly about smuggling and poaching. The researchers estimate the annual value of legal wildlife trade at about 220 to 300 billion dollars, compared with illegal trade worth about 28.4 to 39.5 billion dollars a year, which means the legal market is roughly ten times the size of the illegal one, and that the species most affected by trade are often moving through lawful channels rather than hidden ones. That distinction matters because illegal trade can be fought with enforcement, while legal trade requires a different response: rules about how much can be taken, monitoring of wild populations, and honest assessments of whether the harvest is sustainable, and the study suggests those safeguards are missing for most species. The finding also reframes the role of consumers and businesses, because much of the trade that puts species at risk is not criminal at all, but ordinary commerce in pets, plants, timber and food that happens openly and at great scale.

4.1 The value of the legal market

The legal trade figure of roughly 220 to 300 billion dollars a year covers the full range of wildlife products sold through lawful channels, from timber and seafood to live animals, ornamental plants and medicinal ingredients, and the researchers say the scale of that market is one reason the trade involves so many species, since a market of that size reaches into every corner of the natural world. The illegal trade figure of 28.4 to 39.5 billion dollars a year is itself large, and it covers the smuggling of high-value species such as elephants, tigers and pangolins, but the study’s comparison shows that focusing only on illegal trade misses about nine-tenths of the money and most of the species involved. The researchers note that legal trade is worth approximately ten times more than illegal trade, and they argue that this imbalance is not widely understood, because enforcement and media attention concentrate on the illegal trade while the far larger legal trade operates with much less scrutiny. The value figures are estimates drawn from the available data, and the authors acknowledge the uncertainty in them, but they say the gap between legal and illegal trade is large enough that the broad conclusion holds even with that uncertainty.

4.2 Why legal does not mean sustainable

The fact that trade is legal says nothing about whether it is sustainable, and the study’s authors warn that for most of the 107,356 species there is no information about how many individuals are taken from the wild, where they are taken from, or how their wild populations are faring, which means legality is no guarantee that a species can withstand the harvest. Professor Hughes put the problem plainly, saying that for most of these species there is little to no data, with no data on quantity and origins, let alone the population-level data needed to assess whether trade poses a risk to a species’ survival, a gap that applies to legal trade just as much as to illegal trade. Many species enter legal trade through permits and quotas that were set without proper population surveys, and in some cases the quotas are based on guesswork or on historical catch levels rather than on what the wild population can actually support. The result is that species can decline sharply while their trade remains entirely lawful, and by the time the decline is noticed, the population may already be too small to recover, which is why the researchers argue that monitoring and sustainability assessments need to catch up with the scale of the legal market.

5. The wild-capture problem

The study delivers a second uncomfortable finding about where traded animals actually come from, because it overturns the common belief that most traded animals are bred in captivity, and shows instead that the overwhelming majority of traded animal species have been taken from the wild at least once. More than 80 per cent of species traded for commercial purposes have a history of being captured in the wild, according to the researchers, which means that the trade depends heavily on removing animals from their natural habitats rather than on breeding them in farms, zoos or other captive facilities. That matters because wild capture puts direct pressure on wild populations, and because it is far harder to monitor than captive breeding, since animals taken from forests, rivers and oceans can be hard to trace back to their origin, and the numbers taken are often not recorded at all. The finding also raises questions about claims made in the pet trade and other markets that animals are captive-bred, since the study suggests that for most species, wild capture remains a central part of the supply chain even when captive breeding also exists.

5.1 More than 80 percent taken from the wild

The figure of more than 80 per cent applies to animal species traded for commercial purposes, and it means that for four out of every five such species, at least some individuals have been captured from the wild and distributed through trade, rather than all of them coming from captive-bred stock. The researchers reached this conclusion by examining the records of how traded animals were sourced, and they argue that the result challenges a widely held assumption in the trade, namely that captive breeding has largely replaced wild capture, an assumption that has been used to justify the continued sale of many species. In practice, captive breeding is expensive and slow for many species, and wild capture is often cheaper and easier, especially for species that breed slowly or are hard to keep in captivity, so traders have a strong incentive to take animals from the wild even when captive-bred animals are also available. The study’s authors say that to reduce the blind spots in monitoring, the fragmented datasets that record trade need to be brought together into an integrated monitoring framework, so that the true share of wild-caught animals can be tracked rather than guessed.

5.2 Populations shrinking where trade is heaviest

The pressure of wild capture shows up in the numbers for the populations themselves, because the study found that for species with available data, traded populations are on average 50 to 60 per cent smaller than populations of species that are not traded, a gap that points to trade as a major force shrinking wild numbers. The comparison is not proof that trade alone caused the difference, since traded species may also face habitat loss and other pressures, but the size of the gap, and the fact that it appears across many different groups of species, suggests that removing animals and plants for trade is taking a heavy toll. The researchers link the pattern to the lack of population data for most species, because without knowing how many individuals remain in the wild, traders and regulators cannot tell whether the numbers being taken are a small fraction of a healthy population or a large fraction of one that is already in trouble. The finding also helps explain why some species that were once common have become rare without anyone noticing, since the decline happens gradually across many small harvests rather than in a single dramatic event.

6. The monitoring gaps

The study’s title points directly at its central message, that the true scale of global wildlife trade is obscured by data gaps, and the researchers document those gaps in detail, showing that the systems meant to track trade miss large parts of it and fail to share information with each other. The gaps are not only about species that are never recorded, but also about the quality of the records that do exist, because many databases record that a species was traded without saying how many individuals were involved, where they came from, or whether they were taken from the wild or bred in captivity. The result is a monitoring system that can say a species is in trade but cannot say whether that trade is sustainable, which is the question that matters most for conservation, and the researchers warn that without better data, decisions about which species to protect will keep being made in the dark. The study’s authors call for fragmented datasets to be incorporated into an integrated monitoring framework, so that records from different countries and different parts of the trade can be compared and combined.

6.1 Species missing from official records

One of the clearest signs of the monitoring failure is that 676 animal species listed in the appendices of CITES, the main international agreement that regulates wildlife trade, were not recorded in trade databases at all, even though their listing means they are recognised as species whose trade needs to be controlled. The fact that hundreds of listed species are missing from the records shows that even the species governments have already agreed to watch are slipping through the net, and the researchers say the problem is likely to be far worse for the many thousands of traded species that are not listed under CITES at all. The United States LEMIS database illustrates the same point from the other direction, because it recorded 27.5 per cent of traded animal species uniquely, meaning those species appeared in American records and nowhere else, which suggests that many other countries are simply not recording the species passing through their own trade. The study also found that the indicators used to track progress under the United Nations Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework cover only a small share of the species involved in wildlife trade, leaving the rest outside the framework that is supposed to guide global conservation.

6.2 A framework that covers only a fraction

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, agreed by governments as the world’s main plan for halting biodiversity loss, includes trade indicators that cover only about 2 to 3 per cent of the species in trade, according to the study, which means that roughly 97 per cent of traded species fall outside the measures used to judge whether the world is meeting its conservation goals. That gap matters because the framework is meant to be the yardstick for progress, and if it only measures a tiny fraction of the trade, then governments can report success while most of the species affected by trade continue to decline unnoticed. The researchers argue that the framework’s trade target needs to be broadened to reflect the true scale of trade, and that the indicators used to track it should cover far more species, including the plants, fungi and invertebrates that are currently almost invisible in the official numbers. The gap also reflects a deeper problem with how trade is governed, because the rules and the monitoring were built around a much smaller picture of the trade than the one the study now presents, and updating them will require governments to accept that the task is far bigger than they assumed.

7. What trade means for extinction

The study connects the scale of trade directly to the loss of species, reporting that trade is linked to 294 global extinctions, with a further 25 species now surviving only in captivity and 192 regional population losses, figures that turn the abstract count of 107,356 species into a record of real and irreversible harm. Those numbers are drawn from the available evidence linking trade to the disappearance of species, and the researchers present them as a minimum, since many extinctions caused by trade may never have been recorded, especially for species that were poorly studied before they vanished. The link between trade and extinction is not only about the rarest animals, and the study shows that trade can push a species over the edge when it is combined with habitat loss, disease and climate change, with the removal of individuals for trade weakening populations that are already under stress. The researchers warn that the extinction toll will grow unless the trade is better understood and better managed, because the current system cannot identify which species are most at risk until their numbers have already fallen sharply.

7.1 Extinctions and populations already lost

The figure of 294 global extinctions linked to trade covers species that no longer exist anywhere in the wild or in captivity, and the additional 25 species that survive only in captivity are those whose wild populations have been wiped out, leaving them dependent on zoos, aquariums and breeding centres for their continued existence. The 192 regional population losses describe cases where a species has disappeared from part of its range, even if it survives elsewhere, a pattern that matters because the loss of local populations weakens the species as a whole and reduces its ability to adapt to changing conditions. These figures are based on the evidence available to the researchers, and they acknowledge that the true numbers are likely to be higher, since many species disappear without being studied, and the role of trade in their decline may never be documented. The extinction figures also underline the point that trade is not a minor pressure on wildlife, but one of the forces that has already erased hundreds of species from the planet, and that continues to threaten many more.

7.2 The species at the sharp end

While the study counts more than 107,000 species, the risks are not spread evenly, and some species face far greater pressure than others, including those that are rare, slow to breed, or found only in a small area, where even modest levels of trade can be enough to drive numbers down. The researchers note that the familiar targets of illegal trade, elephants, tigers and pangolins, represent only a small fraction of the broader market, which means that public attention and enforcement are concentrated on a handful of species while thousands of others are traded with little scrutiny. One example of a species caught in the gap is the Javan slit-faced bat, for which the United States-based nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity has filed a petition asking the US Fish and Wildlife Service to list it under the Endangered Species Act, a move reported around the same time as the study and one that shows how individual species can fall through the cracks of the international system. The study’s authors argue that identifying which species are at the sharp end requires far better data on trade volumes and wild populations, and that until that data exists, conservation efforts will keep focusing on the best-known species while lesser-known ones decline quietly.

8. What remains unconfirmed and what to watch next

Much about the global wildlife trade remains unconfirmed, starting with the study’s own headline number, because the researchers say the figure of 107,356 species is likely an underestimate, and the true total could be higher still, with the size of the gap depending on how much trade happens in markets and countries that keep no records at all. The sustainability of trade in most of the species counted is also unconfirmed, since for the majority there is no data on how many individuals are taken, where they come from, or how their wild populations are changing, which means no one can say with confidence which species are safe and which are in danger. The study also leaves open how much of the trade is truly commercial and how much is local use, how the online market will develop, and whether the legal trade figures of 220 to 300 billion dollars a year will keep growing as demand rises in countries where incomes are increasing. The coming weeks will provide the answers to some of these questions, as researchers, governments and conservation groups respond to the study, but the full picture will take much longer to emerge.

8.1 What governments and CITES may do next

The study’s findings are likely to be discussed at meetings of CITES and at gatherings under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, where governments will have to decide whether to broaden the species covered by trade controls and whether to invest in the integrated monitoring framework the researchers call for. Whether any government acts quickly is unconfirmed, and past experience suggests that expanding monitoring takes time and money, and that countries with large wildlife trades may resist new reporting requirements, especially if they lack the capacity to meet them. The researchers’ call for fragmented datasets to be brought together into a single framework will need agreement between countries that currently keep their trade records in different formats or do not publish them at all, and it is not yet clear which governments will lead that effort. The petition to list the Javan slit-faced bat under the United States Endangered Species Act shows one route through which the study’s findings could lead to action for individual species, but whether that petition succeeds, and whether similar petitions follow for other species, remains to be seen.

8.2 What to watch next

The next steps to watch include any response from CITES and from the governments that run the Kunming-Montreal framework, any new research that updates the 107,356 figure as more data becomes available, and any sign that countries are beginning to publish more complete trade records or to track online sales more closely. Researchers will also be watching for new studies that measure the trade in specific groups, such as plants, fungi and invertebrates, where the data gaps are largest, and for evidence about whether wild capture is falling as captive breeding grows or whether it remains the main source of traded animals. The study’s authors have warned that the true scale of the trade may be far greater than even their new estimate, so the most important thing to watch is whether the next assessments find still more species in trade, or whether better monitoring finally begins to close the gaps. The coming weeks will provide the answers.

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