Main data files for Marshall et al. Almost 30,000 wild species: how much do we really know about legal wildlife trade?

Main Data for Marshall et al. Almost 30,000 wild species: how much do we really know about legal wildlife trade?, that aimed to describe the patterns present in 20 years of LEMIS wildlife import records.

Summary: An analysis of 22 years of publicly accessible US wildlife trade data, of almost 30,000 species and over 2.85 billion individuals, provides insights into global trade trends and emphasises the importance of accessible trade data in biodiversity conservation efforts.

Explanation of files and fields is in MainDataFileDetails.txt. Users of this data should be aware that the data still contains errors even after the correction of names and removal of outliers. Caution should be exercised when using and interpreting this trade dataset. The associated publication and supplementary discussion contains details on the limitations of this data.

Further details on the cleaning of the pre-2014 data can be found Eskew, E. A., White, A. M., Ross, N., Smith, K. M., Smith, K. F., Rodríguez, J. P., ... & Daszak, P. (2020). United States wildlife and wildlife product imports from 2000–2014. Scientific Data, 7(1), 22. and Eskew, E. A., White, A. M., Ross, N., Smith, K. M., Smith, K. F., Rodríguez, J. P., ... & Daszak, P. (2019). United States LEMIS wildlife trade data curated by EcoHealth Alliance. Zenodo Dataset, 10. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.3565869