Ancient Egypt’s feline gods, embroidered tigers on Chinese textiles, lions in Southern Africa’s San cave paintings and jaguars symbolizing military prowess in Mesoamerican cultures — all of them show how wildcats have penetrated human folklore and fascination.

“These cats are historically and culturally very important to people across the globe,” says Gareth Whittington-Jones, director of the Counter Wildlife Crime program at Panthera, an NGO that works on the conservation of wildcats.

Our enchantment with wild felids has made them a widely traded commodity, both legally and illegally. All 40 species of wild cats are listed on CITES, the international wildlife trade agreement. The trade involves live animals, scientific specimens and body parts.

“There’s very, very different types of trade,” says wildlife trade researcher Vincent Nijman from Oxford Brookes University, U.K., referring to the feline trade. Lynx (genus Lynx), found in colder parts of the Northern Hemisphere, are traded for their fur. Tigers (Panthera tigris) in Southeast Asia are in demand for their bones used in traditional medicine. Leopard (P. pardus) skins are sought after in Southern Africa for ceremonial purposes and lion (P. leo) body parts, such as bones and claws, are also sold. Many wildcats are also traded as live animals, either to zoos or private collectors and as taxidermied trophies.

Nijman says each of these trade types “affect species very differently, and will be of a very different order of magnitude.”

Trends in legal cat trade

The CITES database, a comprehensive data set containing records of the recorded legal international trade in wildlife, contains 52,533 records at the time of publishing for wildcats traded in the last 25 years, between 2000 and 2024. This includes commercial trade in live animals, specimens for scientific research and body parts, harvested from wild-caught and captive-bred felids. Countries have until October 2025 to submit all their 2024 trade data in the annual reports to the CITES Secretariat, which forms the basis for data in the CITES database.

Each record represents a permit issued for import/export, and each permit may contain more than one live individual or body parts from many individuals. Permits may also be issued for separate body parts harvested from the same animal. The number of records does not represent the number of individuals traded.

Among wildcats, lions are the species with the most CITES records, with 10,401 CITES permits issued between 2000 and 2024. Asiatic lions (P. leo persica), a subspecies with a single wild population in India, is listed on CITES Appendix I and its commercial trade is prohibited. African lions, found across sub-Saharan Africa, are on Appendix II, which permits commercial trade. The species is listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, with populations decreasing across its range.

The U.S., the world’s largest importer of wildlife, tops the list of lion importers, followed by South Africa and Germany. Most lions are exported from South Africa, where they are also captive-bred, followed by Zimbabwe and Tanzania. Trophy hunting, zoo transfers and trade in body parts, such as bones and claws for medicinal and commercial purposes, are the key drivers of the lion trade.

Leopards (P. pardus) come in second, with 8,273 CITES records for the species in the last 25 years. Listed on CITES Appendix 1, they have a wide geographic range covering large parts of Africa and parts of the Middle East and Asia. But research shows leopards have lost nearly 75% of their historic range, largely due to habitat loss and are classified vulnerable.

Primarily traded for their skins, bones, claws and teeth, leopards are victims of large-scale poaching. A 2012 TRAFFIC report found that, on average, four leopards enter the illegal trade each week in India alone. The U.S. tops the list of import countries with the most permits for leopards, followed by South Africa and France, while South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia have issued the most export permits.

Bobcats (L. rufus) and Canada lynx (L. canadensis), both heavily harvested for their fur, rank third and fourth for the number of CITES records. Between 2000 and 2024, 5,393 permits were issued for bobcats, mostly exported from Canada, the U.S. and Italy, and most import permits were issued for the U.S., Russia and Hong Kong.

On the other hand, 4,348 trade permits were issued for Canada lynx, with most export permits from Canada, the U.S. and Greece and imported into the U.S., Germany and Russia. Both species are listed on Appendix II of CITES.

The tiger is fifth among the most CITES permits issued for wildcats. An Appendix I species native to South and Southeast Asia, trade in tiger bones for use in traditional Chinese medicine has contributed to its plummeting populations across its range and pushed the species to endangered status on the IUCN Red List.

The CITES database shows 3,884 CITES trade permits issued for tigers between 2000 and 2024, with the U.S., China and Italy as the top three countries with most import permits, and South Africa, Russia and the U.S. with the most export permits issued. In addition to body parts, trade in captive-bred tigers by tiger farms is a concern for the species.

According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), there are nearly 9,000 tigers held in more than 300 farms across Asia, mostly in China, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. In contrast, just over 5,500 tigers roam in the wild. Captive-bred tigers enter the trade legally and illegally to meet the demand for bones, skin and other body parts. A 2022 TRAFFIC report found that 3,377 tigers were confiscated between January 2000 and June 2022 across 50 countries and territories, with tiger skins being the most frequently seized product.

Caveats about CITES data

Although CITES is the only database that captures international legal trade in wildlife listed on the CITES appendices, there are data discrepancies in its entries, including those related to wildcats. These include mismatches in the export and import quantities reported, false declarations and misrepresenting wild-caught individuals as captive-bred, and these discrepancies open loopholes that traffickers can use to launder wildcats.

The trade in specimens for scientific research also skews the data, Nijman says. “There will be exports of tons of specimens, and it’s not always clear what that is, and in some of the analyses, they’re counted as individuals, whereas they could be ear punctures or blood samples or fecal samples.”

According to CatByte, a dashboard for trade in wildcats, specimens are the most traded commodity for wildcats in the last 25 years. “There is often a lot of exchanges in scientific specimens,” says Sarah Stoner from CatByte, “I don’t necessarily think that’s tied to sort of trade demand dynamics at all.”

In some cases, countries do not always report all wildcat trade to CITES, although they are obligated to do so as member states, Nijman says, citing the example of the lynx trade between Canada and the U.S., which he estimates could be among the largest traded species. According to one estimate, annual exports of Canada lynx pelts between 2000 and 2006 from Canada averaged at 15,387 pelts. In contrast, data from CITES for the same period stands at 11,838 pelts.

Data discrepancies also make it difficult to understand trade dynamics and trends. “Because we’re dealing with imprecise estimates, it’s always a challenge to look at these trends and say, what’s definitely [happening],” Whittington-Jones from Panthera says. “One thing we can say with confidence is a lot of these big cats are still very, very imperiled.”

Banner image: An African leopard (Panthera pardus) in South Africa. Image by Rhett Butler/Mongabay.

Smuggling networks exploit migrant debt to fuel tiger poaching in Malaysia, study shows

Citations:

Green, D. (2023). Exploring personhood and identity marking: Paintings of lions and felines in San rock art sites from the southern maloti-drakensberg and northeastern Stormberg, South Africa. Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa, 58(3), 434-476. doi:10.1080/0067270x.2023.2231793

Russo, A. (2015). The prevalence of documentation discrepancies in CITES (Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) trade data for Appendix I and II species exported out of Africa between the years 2003 and 2012 (Doctoral dissertation, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, South Africa). Retrieved from https://science.uct.ac.za/sites/default/files/content_migration/science_uct_ac_za/841/files/Russo.%25202015.pdf

Uddin, N., Enoch, S., Harihar, A., Pickles, R. S., & Hughes, A. C. (2023). Laundered alive? The transnational trade in wild felids through Bangladesh. Global Ecology and Conservation, 41, e02356. doi:10.1016/j.gecco.2022.e02356

FEEDBACK: Use this form to send a message to the author of this post. If you want to post a public comment, you can do that at the bottom of the page.