WildTrace Follow the trade. Open evidence on illegal wildlife trade.

Answer · for Researchers, Policy & enforcement

Does wildlife trade overlap with disease outbreaks?

Viruses confirmed by sequencing or isolation are recorded in 23 traded groups, and WHO published 2,117 reports on diseases with an animal reservoir; the two share a map, not a cause.

2,117 WHO outbreak reports on animal-borne disease

Primates1,033
Parrots & songbirds463
Wild boar341
Turtles & tortoises136
Bears74
Pythons & reptile skins40

Who answers

VIRION (Carlson et al. 2022) virus-host records
WHO Disease Outbreak News outbreak reports

What the number cannot tell you

Virus records follow where scientists sampled; an outbreak near a seizure does not mean the trade caused it.

Open Zoonoses → 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