Does Economic Growth Exhibit a Systematic Relationship With Illegal Wildlife Trade?

Illegal wildlife trade (IWT) is regarded as a major environmental challenge, and economic growth is often assumed to increase pressure on wildlife through rising consumption and expanding markets. However, empirical analyses linking macroeconomic change to wildlife crime remain limited. This paper examines whether economic growth is systematically associated with illegal wildlife trade by comparing a cross-country dataset covering 148 countries from 1990 onwards. Seizure records are taken from the TRAFFIC database and used as an estimate of illegal wildlife trade, while economic growth is measured using real GDP growth data from the Quality of Government dataset. The analysis employs a linear regression model with country and time fixed effects. The initial pooled regression suggests a small positive association between economic growth and seizure counts. However, once country and time fixed effects are included, the relationship becomes statistically insignificant. These findings suggest that economic growth alone does not generate a consistent pattern in illegal wildlife trade. Instead, wildlife crime appears to be affected by growth in opposing supply- and demand-side economic forces that ultimately do not provide a systematic relationship.