Answer · for Policy & enforcement, Researchers

Can "captive-bred" labels be trusted?

Not always: declaring wild-caught animals as bred is a documented laundering route. Palau's commercial sea fan & corals exports moved from 0% to 97% captive-bred in a few years.

454 exporter-group pairs checked

Palau: Sea fan & corals97
Uzbekistan: Turtles & tortoises78
Ecuador: Frogs, salamanders & axolotls83
Japan: Turtles & tortoises96
Malaysia: Sea fan & corals42
United Kingdom: Turtles & tortoises92

Who answers

CITES Trade Database seized shipments (source I), reported by governments to UNEP-WCMC
Lyons & Natusch 2011 the green python laundering study

What the number cannot tell you

A rise is a question to ask, never a finding: genuine breeding and coral farming produce it too.

See the table in Analysis → All questions →

Rebuilt daily from the WildTrace data. Cite: Verma, T. K. (2026). WildTrace: the open atlas of illegal wildlife trade. Zenodo. doi:10.5281/zenodo.22902819