A Comprehensive Reassessment of the Global Illegal Wildlife Trade's Economic Value

The illegal wildlife trade (IWT) remains a major driver of global biodiversity loss and is considered to be one of the most profitable forms of transnational organised crime. A widely cited valuation estimated IWT's annual worth at US$7–23 billion; however, its methodology is unclear and outdated, with the world changing significantly since then. Hence, we developed a methodologically transparent and updated estimate of the global IWT value. Based on IWT seizures reported in TRAFFIC's open‐access Wildlife Trade Portal, prices for each species–product combination were obtained through a systematic search, and then corrected using expansion factors to account for underreporting and under‐detection. Using seizures reported between 2016 and 2021, we conservatively estimated the mean annual economic value of IWT to be US$34.0 ± 3.42 billion (5th–95th percentile uncertainty range: US$28.4–39.5 billion), after correcting for global reported volumes and undetected seizures. Furthermore, analysis of the TRAFFIC seizure records showed that non‐CITES‐listed taxa accounted for roughly 5% of the total economic value of reported seizures, highlighting the presence of unregulated species in international trade and regulatory gaps. Our transparent and reproducible framework offers a necessary update to long‐standing underestimates, which can then be aligned with international enforcement and resource allocation.