An overview of seized illegal wildlife entering the United States

Gohar A. Petrossian, Stephen F. Pires and Daan P. van Uhm

Global Crime, 2016, vol. 17, issue 2, 181-201

Abstract: The current study analyses seizures made at US ports of entry between 2003 and 2013, with the aim to identify concentrations of illegal wildlife imports into the United States. Findings show that 94% of species seized belong to six groups -- mammals, molluscs, birds, reptiles, fish and coral -- with mammals and reptiles making up more than half of all seizure incidents. Additionally, most seized wildlife is imported as leather products, medicinal products and as meat. The majority of seizures emanate from six countries, and illegal wildlife is primarily brought to the US via airline baggage. Temporal trends of wildlife seizures point to increases in the seizures of all groups of species, with the exception of birds. Based on these findings, we recommend using situational crime prevention techniques at US ports of entry to reduce opportunities that enable this trade.

Date: 2016
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/17440572.2016.1152548 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:fglcxx:v:17:y:2016:i:2:p:181-201

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/FGLC20

DOI: 10.1080/17440572.2016.1152548

Access Statistics for this article

Global Crime is currently edited by Carlo Morselli

More articles in Global Crime from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().