Question 1

What is illegal wildlife trade?

Accepted Answer

Illegal wildlife trade is the unlawful taking, transport and sale of wild animals and plants and their parts, from pangolin scales and elephant ivory to orchids, cacti, rosewood and medicinal roots. CITES lists more than 40,900 species whose international trade is regulated; UNODC recorded around 140,000 seizures in 162 countries between 2015 and 2021, involving about 4,000 species.

Question 2

Where can I download open data on wildlife seizures?

Accepted Answer

WildTrace publishes every recorded case as CSV at https://tarunv13.github.io/wildtrace/data/cases.csv under CC BY 4.0, with the place, species group, quantity, agencies, sources and an evidence grade for each case. The JSON behind the map is in the same folder.

Question 3

How reliable is each wildlife trafficking case?

Accepted Answer

Every case is graded: validated (checked by a reviewer), official (at least one government, customs, police or judicial source), corroborated (two or more independent outlets) or single report (one outlet, a lead rather than a finding). Counts show where wildlife crime is reported, not where it happens, and cases whose reports name no place are counted but not mapped.

Question 4

Does WildTrace cover plants as well as animals?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Alongside pangolin, ivory, rhino horn and big cats, WildTrace tracks orchids, cacti and succulents, cycads, carnivorous plants, rosewood and other timber, agarwood, sandalwood, red sanders and medicinal and aromatic plants, which are heavily traded and rarely reported.

Question 5

Is there a free alternative to i2 Analyst's Notebook for link analysis?

Accepted Answer

WildTrace includes an open-source link-analysis workbench that runs entirely in your browser. You can import your own CSV, Excel or JSON, map the columns, and chart your entities against the public wildlife trade data. Nothing is uploaded: imported data stays in your browser.