Investigating the current implementation barriers and the potential social and ecological effects of a <scp>CITES</scp> reverse listing on the international exotic pet trade

Abstract The trade in exotic pets is a significant contributor to the unsustainable and sustainable trade of wildlife. The Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) aims to regulate sustainable wildlife trade. A reverse listing (RL) has previously been proposed, which bans trade of all species until trade is proven to be sustainable, when they are added to a positive list permitting trade. Since the 1980s, this concept's effectiveness has been debated. We identified zoonoses, invasive alien species (IAS), welfare, livelihoods, sustainable harvest and legal trade as six important themes in exotic pet trade literature. We used an adapted investigate, discuss, explain, aggregate (IDEA) protocol to collect expert estimates on the effects of a CITES RL on the identified socioecological themes and determined areas of uncertainty to guide future research. We find that experts differ in estimates on zoonoses, IAS, livelihoods, welfare, sustainable harvest and legal trade. Responses indicate that how RL would be implemented and what it would include generated the most uncertainty in effect estimates. Experts were particularly concerned with the effect of RL on the amount of legal trade and sustainable harvest. There was concern that the frequency of legal trade in exotic pets would decrease as species would be illegally trafficked to circumnavigate new restrictions causing a decrease in harvest sustainability. This shift was predicted to negatively affect livelihoods for those dependent on the legal trade of exotic pets. The results show that greater clarity on what the aims of a RL are, what would be included in the listing criteria and what would be expected by the signatories would improve the quality of research on RL. This would support more evidence‐based decision‐making for the future trajectory of CITES and the regulation of sustainable trade. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.