Much of the wildlife trade today is illegal, especially the international trade. Thus, it is extremely difficult to know its exact scale, but all of the figures available indicate that it is massive.
- In a single market in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, about 13,000 are sold every year for their meat.
- In a single market in North Sulawesi, Indonesia, about 90,000 wild mammals are sold every year for their meat.
- About 12,000 tonnes of wildlife (live weight) is sold in markets in Gabon each year.
- In one market in Java, between 0.5 and 1.5 million birds are sold every year for the pet trade.
- $3.6 million dollars worth of wildlife is exported from a single province in Lao PDR annually, including pangolins, wild cats, bears and primates.
- In Vietnam, around 1,500 restaurants in Ho Chi Minh City serve wildlife meat, and one wildlife trader in Da Nang city reportedly trades up to six tonnes of wildlife each week, selling to Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang and China.
Some animals are specifically targeted because of the high price which they fetch.
- More than 21,000 African grey parrots are exported each year from Cameroon, probably about twice the sustainable limit, and 14-50% of birds captured die even before they can be exported so the total offtake is even higher.
- Between 1970 and 1993, key east Asian consuming countries imported a minimum of ten tons of tiger bones from other parts of Asia, representing some 500 to 1000 tigers.
- In Sumatra, about 51 tigers were killed each year between 1998 and 2002, the majority being for trade to East Asia.
Not all wildlife trade is from tropical countries. The annual harvest of animals in Mongolia hunted for their fur is about three million Siberian marmots, more than 200,000 Corsac foxes, and 185,000 red foxes.
Two of the largest consumers of wildlife in the world are thought to be the USA and China. Between 1992 and 2002, US trade in wildlife and wildlife products increased by 75%. In 2002, legally declared shipments of wild live animals into the US were more than 38,000 mammals, 365,000 birds, 2 million reptiles, and 49 million amphibians. The scale of the illegal trade is unknown, but in 2003, two seizures at major airports included 26 monkeys from Guinea for a wedding reception, and 270 kg of meat from rats, squirrels, bats and duikers from Ghana.
China is reputed to be the world’s largest importer of turtles, ivory, tiger parts and pangolins. Although supporting data are scarce, again some figures are illustrative. In 2000, 25 tonnes of turtles were exported from Sumatra to China every week; by 2003, the number of turtles in the wild in Sumatra was declining rapidly, so exports dropped to seven tonnes per week. On any one occasion, more than 90,000 snakes and 24,000 turtles can be seen in markets in Guangzhou and Shenzhen; surveys in the markets recorded 39 species of mammals, 453 species of birds, 154 of reptiles, and 31 of amphibians. Between January 1998 and September 2001, a minimum of 30-45 tonnes of ivory were seized en route to or entering China. And in 2002, 15,000 pangolin skins were confiscated in Thailand, en route between Indonesia and China.