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Belt and Road Initiative may create new supplies for illegal wildlife trade in large carnivores

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 3, pages 1267–1268 (2019)Cite this article

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To the Editor — Southeast Asia is a major hub of illegal wildlife trade, with supplies arriving from many parts of the world. Most west and central Asian countries have hitherto been less engaged in this supply chain1, possibly because of remote locations, less-developed transportation networks and easier availability of other sources of supply, but China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has the potential to dramatically change that situation. The planned BRI and its southern tributary, the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor, traverse key habitats for large carnivores, which are highly marketable species in China and Southeast Asia. By creating new access to wildlife and supply corridors, the BRI poses a significant risk of increasing illegal wildlife trade in the region.

As well as trade in live animals and animal parts, traders are also seeking alternative sources for substituting species to be used in traditional Chinese medicine5. For example, geographically distant African lions Panthera leo, African leopards P. pardus and jaguars P. onca are traded allegedly to supply the substitute tiger P. tigris bone market in Southeast Asia6,7. Such trade could increase following the recent recognition by the World Health Organization’s World Health Assembly of traditional Chinese medicine and the probable adoption of the 11th version of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, which includes 400 diagnoses pertaining to traditional Chinese medicine8.

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Fig. 1: The BRI in west and central Asia.

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Acknowledgements

M.S.F. was supported by a research fellowship from the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford. A.H. was supported by the Oxford Martin Programme on the Illegal Wildlife Trade.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Mohammad S. Farhadinia, Amy Hinsley & David W. Macdonald

  2. College of Forestry, Banda University of Agriculture and Technology, Banda, Uttar Pradesh, India

    Aishwarya Maheshwari

  3. Department of Animal Sciences, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan

    Muhammad Ali Nawaz

  4. Department of Wildlife Ecology and Management, Faculty of Forestry, Duzce University, Duzce, Turkey

    Hüseyin Ambarlı

  5. Institute of Zoology, Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Tashkent, Uzbekistan

    Mariya Alexeevna Gritsina

  6. Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity of Kazakhstan, Astana, Kazakhstan

    Maxim A. Koshkin

  7. Ilbirs Foundation, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

    Tatjana Rosen

  8. Interdisciplinary Centre for Conservation Science, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Amy Hinsley

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  1. Mohammad S. Farhadinia
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Correspondence to Mohammad S. Farhadinia.

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Farhadinia, M.S., Maheshwari, A., Nawaz, M.A. et al. Belt and Road Initiative may create new supplies for illegal wildlife trade in large carnivores. Nat Ecol Evol 3, 1267–1268 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-019-0963-6

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