Taking stock of wildlife farming: A global perspective

To meet the global demand for the commercial trade of wildlife and wildlife derived products, wild animals are captured from wild populations or farmed. ‘Wildlife farming’ refers to commercial captive breeding or ranching wild animals in captivity with the intent to generate financial profit. Many countries encourage farming of wild animals to capitalize from consumer demand for wildlife products alongside the belief that captive breeding practises help to protect wild populations by reducing the pressure on the number of animals captured directly from the wild. However, wildlife farming is associated with concerns relating to animal welfare, public health and biodiversity conservation, and case studies demonstrate that farming wildlife does not necessarily alleviate pressure on wild populations. The global scale of wildlife farming, and hence its impact, is currently unknown. Here, we obtained data from published literature to compile a database of wildlife farmed during the period 2000 – 2020. We also obtained data from Freedom of Information requests to a small number of countries for wildlife farmed during 2021 – 2022. Our results demonstrate that at least 487 wildlife species are farmed across the world, comprised of at least 27 amphibians, 133 reptiles, 249 birds, and 79 mammals. Of these documented species, 34% are considered either Near Threatened, Vulnerable, Endangered or Critically Endangered by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, and 62% are listed on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) Appendices. Data pertaining to the number of farmed individuals for each species was even more difficult to determine, but reports of between 936,321,047 and 963,711,547 individual farmed wild animals were recorded in the literature. Commercial breeding operations were recorded in 90 countries worldwide. We suggest that the true number of farmed wildlife is likely to be far higher than the data compiled in our database due to the paucity of publicly available information on this topic and the challenges we faced obtaining data from relevant authorities. We discuss the implications of the scale of the industry, its inadequate transparency, and its relevance for the trade of wild animals and their derivatives as commercial products. To our knowledge this is the first attempt in the literature to summarise the global scope and scale of commercial wildlife farming. We hope this initial inventory can provide insight into the full extent of this industry and its impact on wild animals globally.