Commercial exploitation of wild animals

Nature

Commercial exploitation of wild animals refers to the capture, trade, and use of wildlife for profit, including for food, medicine, pets, entertainment, and luxury goods. This practice poses significant problems, such as driving species toward extinction, disrupting ecosystems, and spreading zoonotic diseases. Illegal and unsustainable exploitation undermines conservation efforts and often involves animal cruelty. Additionally, it threatens the livelihoods of communities dependent on healthy wildlife populations. International regulations, such as CITES, aim to control this exploitation, but enforcement challenges persist, making commercial exploitation of wild animals a critical global environmental and ethical issue.

Background

The commercial exploitation of wild animals emerged as a global concern in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when industrialization and expanding trade networks accelerated unsustainable hunting and capture. International alarm grew following dramatic declines in species such as the American bison and African elephant. The 1970s saw heightened awareness, catalyzed by CITES (1975), as scientific evidence and media coverage revealed the scale and ecological consequences of wildlife commodification worldwide.

Incidence

In China, black bears are kept for their entire lives in confining cages no bigger than transport crates so that their bile gland can be pierced and drained weekly to produce a form of Chinese medicine. An estimate of bears subject to this treatment in the mid-1990's is around 40,000.