Motion 108

Commercial pet trade is defined herein as domestic or international trade in live wild animals for personal companionship or ownership, and includes trade by collectors/hobbyists, and legal and illegal trade.

Target 5 of the Kunming Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework is “Ensure that the use, harvesting and trade of wild species is sustainable, safe and legal”. None of these apply to multiple species in the pet trade today.

The commercial pet trade is a multi-billion dollar business, and is increasingly diverse, encompassing multiple species from almost all terrestrial taxa. Both supply and demand locations are global. It is growing in scale and reach. All terrestrial species newly listed on the CITES Appendices at the last Conference of the Parties, CoP19, were threatened due to the pet trade. Birds and reptiles are especially species-rich and abundant in the trade.

Uses are multiple, including as house pets, as songbirds, for animal cafes and other interactive businesses, and for hobbyist collectors often paying large sums for individual animals. Between 2009 and 2018, the USA imported more than 8.8 million wild-caught animals from globally unregulated terrestrial vertebrate species and 800,000 individuals from species regulated under CITES. The true extent of the trade remains largely undocumented due to challenges in tracing and to much of the trade being online.

The threat to wild species occurs if animals are taken from the wild, and if they are reportedly from captivity since that can entail wild-sourced animals being laundered into legal markets, especially since captive breeding of many species can be more costly and complex than wild capture.

Trade in live wildlife is often detrimental to animal welfare, and poses major risks of transmitting disease within and between species, with transmission risk increasing along trade chains. Stressed animals in multi-species markets shed pathogens, creating the ideal environment for cross-species transmissions and recombinations.

The live animal trade plays a major role in introducing non-native species to areas where they become invasive. Worldwide growth in the number of non-native animal populations introduced via this invasion pathway is growing substantially, with strong potential to increase in the future.

Waiting to enact protections until trade in a species becomes a threat to the species itself, or to the health of humans, other species or the environment, is slow, and many exploited species are not monitored in the wild so the impact of trade on their populations might not be known until they are already in dire straits. A proactive approach, whereby trade is permitted only for species explicitly assessed and deemed to be safe and sustainable, offers a more precautionary framework for regulating commercial live wildlife trade. It is also easier to manage and enforce, since the number of species and potential trade routes permitted would be vastly less than the current situation.

Trade in some taxa is inevitably unsustainable due to their slow breeding, or the need to kill social group members to obtain animals for trade (e.g., mothers). Some taxa are intrinsically unsuitable as pets due to their destructive or dangerous nature so inevitably must be kept in highly confined conditions as adults. Hence, such taxa should be identified, and no commercial trade should be permitted.