Endangered shark trophies dominate the online wildlife trade, study finds

The wildlife trade, both legal and illegal, depletes biodiversity, with research indicating it results in a staggering two-thirds decline in the populations of some traded species. Which is why, when a filmmaker friend asked environmental science professor Jennifer Jacquet if she could “do something” about the widespread wildlife trade, especially the online sale of wildlife products, she began looking hard for a solution.

“It is a really difficult problem,” said Jacquet, who teaches at the University of Miami in the U.S., alluding to the challenges in enforcing existing regulations and closing the many loopholes traffickers exploit in order to keep the trade thriving. “What motivated me is the fact that the trade was contributing to the further exploitation of already endangered animals.”

So Jacquet teamed up with data scientists, policy specialists, criminal justice experts and conservation biologists to understand how big the problem of online wildlife trade was, and what was being sold.

In a recent study published in the journal Biological Conservation, Jacquet and her team used artificial intelligence techniques to collect data on body parts and eggs from threatened species sold online. They found that nearly half of the listings came from endangered species, and nearly one in ten came from critically endangered species. Products from sharks, mainly jaws, made up nearly two-thirds of the listings. Species listed on CITES Appendix I, whose international commercial trade is prohibited, were also being sold online.

“What’s really important about this study is that it focuses on primarily the legal trade,” said University of Miami conservation biologist and study co-author Spencer Roberts. “We’re always talking about illegal wildlife trafficking … but just because it’s legal to trade a species does not mean they’re necessarily any less endangered or threatened by that trade.”

Threatened species sold online ‘tip of the iceberg’

The researchers developed AI-based models to explore and gather information about, or “crawl,” sales listings of wildlife products from species listed on the IUCN Red List and those on CITES Appendix I, posted on 148 online marketplaces over a 15-week period, from March to June 2018. After sifting through more than 10,000 listings, they identified 546 products from 83 species or genera sold as belonging to threatened or trade-restricted species. Just four websites — Etsy, eBay, Gumtree and The Taxidermy Store — sold more than 95% of them.

About 8% (47) of the products listed for sale were from critically endangered species, and nearly half (251) were from endangered species. These included products from mammals such as tigers (Panthera tigris) and sea otters (Enhydra lutris), and from reptiles such as Siamese crocodile (Crocodylus siamensis) and spider tortoise (Pyxis arachnoides). Endangered birds, such as the Java sparrow (Padda oryzivora), sturgeons (Acipenser spp.), and insects, including the Indian tarantula (Poecilotheria spp.), were also advertised for sale.

The listings contained products belonging to 18 CITES Appendix I-listed species, including a taxidermied and mounted jaguar (Panthera onca) priced at $11,000, a cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) fur jacket listed for $33,000, and a bag made from Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis) skin on sale for $115.

The total value of all 546 products was $345,077, with nearly a third listed at $50 or less, and over half sold for under $100. The low prices, the researchers say, indicate that the online market for wildlife products is quite affordable to many. Based on these prices and listings from the three-month study period, the researchers estimate that the online wildlife market for threatened species is likely a million-dollar-per-year industry.

This data is just the “tip of the iceberg,” Roberts said, because the study’s data were very conservative and did not include some products, such as shark teeth.

Sharks top the list of most-traded species

The study found that about two-thirds of the 546 listings were products from sharks, mainly jaws, belonging to 19 threatened species. All the jaws were advertised for sale on eBay. Products from the endangered shortfin mako (Isurus oxyrinchus), a CITES Appendix II-listed species, was the most-sold across platforms, with 113 product listings — nearly twice as much compared to the next most-sold species, the caribou (Rangifer tarandus). Nine of the top ten threatened species with the most listings were sharks.

“We weren’t actually looking for sharks, and it just happened that this pattern jumped out of the data,” Roberts said, adding that their big, scary teeth are probably what attracts people to them. “There’s this sort of blend of fascination and fear, I think, that we have around sharks, and it’s captured in the jaws.”

Nearly three-fourths of the shark products sold online belonged to endangered and critically endangered species. These included the endangered longfin mako (I. paucus), dusky shark (Carcharhinus obscurus), sandbar shark (C. plumbeus), pelagic thresher (Alopias pelagicus), the critically endangered scalloped hammerhead (Sphyrna lewini), and tope or school shark (Galeorhinus galeus). Some of them weren’t listed on CITES, meaning their international trade is not regulated.

The researchers also found seven listings belonging to a species of ray called the bowmouth guitarfish (Rhina ancylostoma) — a close relative of sharks, and one that is critically endangered.

“Sharks are mainly killed for their meat, and the fins, jaws and other elements [are] a byproduct of fisheries [targeted] primarily for the meat,” shark scientist Nick Dulvy from Simon Fraser University in Canada, who was not involved in the study, told Mongabay by email. A recent IUCN report also found that a third of the world’s sharks, rays and chimaeras are threatened with extinction due to overfishing. Dulvy said that since the shortfin mako is valued for its high-quality meat and its fins, once the shark is caught, its liver oil, jaws and skin are also traded.

“We have heard so much about the illegal trade in terrestrial plants and animals for decades, now this study provides evidence that the trade in marine species can far outweigh terrestrial species that have been the focus of most conservation attention and funding,” Dulvy said. “This study reminds us that we need to pay as much, if not more, attention to understanding and regulating the trade in marine species and their products.”

Need for better policies to regulate online trade

Although the data for the study comes from 2018, much has changed since then. eBay, which the study found had 81% of the 546 listings, now prohibits the sale of products from endangered or threatened species listed on the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s Environmental Conservation Online System (ECOS), and those listed in CITES Appendix 1, among others.

A spokesperson from eBay said that, in 2024, the website blocked approximately 1 million potential violations for prohibited wildlife items such as ivory and others from endangered or threatened species. “Users found to be violating policies may face sanctions up to and including a permanent suspension,” the spokesperson said. The complete statement from eBay is here.

Etsy, too, has similar policies that prohibit the sale of products from species designated as threatened or endangered by the U.S. Endangered Species Act or listed on CITES Appendix I. When Mongabay contacted Etsy, a spokesperson said that it is each seller’s responsibility to know and follow all applicable laws, and they are responsible for complying with Etsy’s policies. They added that Etsy monitors listings and users can report listings that violate these policies, and did not say if the site takes down such listings.

Gumtree says it prohibits the sale of ivory and parts of “protected species,” but it does not define what constitutes a protected species. A spokesperson, responding to Mongabay’s query, said that Gumtree does not allow the sale of animal parts, including those of protected species, and uses keyword detection and an in-house moderation team to stop these adverts reaching the site. When a user reports a concern with a listing, the spokesperson said that Gumtree will investigate the listing and take appropriate action, such as removing the advert or blocking offending users. The full statement from Gumtree is here.

While The Taxidermy Store hasn’t publicly outlined its policies on the sale of wildlife parts, a company spokesperson told Mongabay that its policy prohibits the sale of taxidermy products made from protected or endangered species, and that it verifies that all taxidermy products are from non-endangered species by working with hunters, museums, educational centers and government agencies to confirm the legal status of each item being sold. The Taxidermy Store’s full statement is here.

Wildlife trade researcher David Roberts from the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology at the University of Kent, U.K., who was not involved in the study and who is not related to study co-author Spencer Roberts, said he isn’t convinced that these policies are enough. He said that despite eBay’s ivory ban in 2008, he has anecdotally found ivory for sale on eBay in the years since. A 2022 BBC investigation found elephant ivory for sale a decade after eBay’s ban. David Roberts said that he stopped seeing ivory listings on the marketplace only after the UK Ivory Act came into effect in 2022.

“I am skeptical about some of the initiatives that some websites say, partly because the data behind it isn’t transparent,” David Roberts said, adding that even when he reported those listings he saw online, not all of them were taken down.

“I do wonder to what extent some of the things that websites say are slight greenwashing,” David Roberts said. “They could say it, but whether or not they’re doing it is another matter.”

The researchers of the study say they acknowledge that although their initial data identified many CITES Appendix II shark species, some of them, are no longer listed on eBay, thanks to revised policies. However, they say they believe the listings have moved on to other platforms, such as Etsy and Amazon. Amazon has not responded to Mongabay’s questions on its policies on selling wildlife products.

With social media platforms doubling as marketplaces, it gets more difficult to keep a tab on the online trade, David Roberts said. “Given the speed at which platforms change, and trends change in terms of what platforms are currently in vogue and which demographics use which platforms, often it’s very difficult to keep on top.”

The three-month snapshot of the online wildlife trade also highlighted gaps in regulations that blur the line between legal and illegal trade. Since many listings did not specify the products’ geographical origins or indicate whether they were wild-sourced or captive-bred, species protected in certain countries can enter the trade to be sold elsewhere. Additionally, CITES restricts and regulates only international commercial trade — CITES-listed species can still be legally sold domestically without permits.

“Sellers are very aware of the enforcement tools and the gaps between them and [know] how to navigate them,” said Spencer Roberts.

In addition to platform policies, spreading awareness about the wildlife trade problem, reducing demand from customers, country-level regulations to regulate domestic trade and increasing law enforcement can help combat illegal wildlife trade, the researchers say.

Jacquet, who looked for an elusive solution to tackling the widespread online trade, said there’s no “great techno fix” to it. “The more computing power we add, the more it becomes clear that this is a really difficult problem,” she said. “It has to be about changing the relationship we have with wildlife and what we think is the right way to interact with it.”

Citations:

Morton, O., Scheffers, B. R., Haugaasen, T., & Edwards, D. P. (2021). Impacts of wildlife trade on terrestrial biodiversity. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 5(4), 540–548. doi:10.1038/s41559-021-01399-y

Chakraborty, S., Roberts, S. N., Petrossian, G. A., Sosnowski, M., Freire, J., & Jacquet, J. (2025). Prevalence of endangered shark trophies in automated detection of the online wildlife trade. Biological Conservation, 304, 110992. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2025.110992

This article by Spoorthy Raman was first published by Mongabay.com on 11 June 2025. Lead Image: Products from the endangered shortfin mako was the most-sold across platforms, listed 113 times. Image by Ron Watkins / Ocean Image Bank. 

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