Samarkand, 27 November 2025 – The side event ‘Rethinking Trade Data’ we held together with IFAW, AAP and Eurogroup for Animals and hosted by the Dominican Republic.
Cristina De Avila, the Head of Unit of the European Commission’ Directorate-General for Environment, presented the importance of detailed data on wildlife trade for EU policies and enforcement as well as challenges for countries as explained by the Dominican Republic’s Head of Department of Wildlife Regulation and Control, Nelson Garcia Marcano
But also for the zoo community as shown by Craig Hoover and Shelly Grow form the Association of Zoos & Aquariums AZA.
As the Head of Research and Conservation from Fondation Franz Weber, I had the pleasure to show how the EU’s great monitoring tool, the Trade Control and Expert System TRACES works and give some practical inputs and explain why this tool can serve the monitoring of wildlife trade into Europe and potentially globally.
Without baseline data for legal wildlife trade, there is never enough detailed evidence to take informed decisions.
