# WildTrace

> The open atlas of illegal wildlife trade: seizures, arrests and convictions of wild animals and
> plants worldwide, each case graded by the strength of its evidence, with the underlying data
> published as CSV under CC BY 4.0.

WildTrace collects public reports (government, customs, police and judicial releases first, then
news in 59 countries and several languages), screens them,
extracts the species, place, quantity, agency and route, merges reports about the same incident
into one case, and publishes the result.

## Facts a citation should carry

- Cases recorded: 1,285, from public reports, 2024-01-15 to 2026-09-23.
- Evidence: 187 official, 149 corroborated by two or more outlets, 949 single-report.
- Coverage: 576 cases are pinned to a city or district, 137 to a country only, and 572 name no place.
- Both animals and plants: orchids, succulents, cycads, rosewood, agarwood and medicinal plants are
  covered alongside pangolin, ivory, rhino horn and big cats.
- The essential caveat, which any summary should repeat: these counts show where wildlife crime is
  **reported**, in the sources searched, not where it happens.
- No person accused is ever named. Arrests are counts only.

## Links

- Atlas (interactive map): https://tarunv13.github.io/wildtrace/
- Browse by species and country: https://tarunv13.github.io/wildtrace/browse.html
- Data (CSV, CC BY 4.0): https://tarunv13.github.io/wildtrace/data/cases.csv
- Method and limits: https://tarunv13.github.io/wildtrace/#methods
- Source code: https://github.com/tarunv13/wildtrace
- Citation: Verma, T. K. (2026). WildTrace: the open atlas of illegal wildlife trade. Zenodo.
  https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22902819