Journal Article


Online trade in wildlife and the lack of response to COVID-19

Abstract

Wildlife trade has been widely discussed as a likely origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. It remains unclear how the main actors in the wildlife trade chain responded to these discussions and to the campaigns advocating wildlife trade bans. We analyzed the content of ~20,000 posts on 41 Facebook groups devoted to wild pet trade and ran a breakpoint and a content analysis to assess when and how the COVID-19 pandemic was incorporated into the discourse within trade communities. Only 0.44% of advertisements mentioned COVID-19, mostly after WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic. No traders discussed the role of trade in spreading diseases; instead, posts stimulated the trade in wild species during lockdown. COVID-19 potentially offers persuasive arguments for reducing wildlife trade and consumption. This effect was not demonstrated by on-the-ground actors involved in this market. Bans in wildlife trade will not be sufficient and additional strategies are clearly needed.

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Authors

Morcatty, Thais Q.
Feddema, Kim
Nekaris, K.A.I.
Nijman, Vincent

Oxford Brookes departments

Department of Social Sciences

Dates

Year of publication: 2020
Date of RADAR deposit: 2021-01-07


Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License


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