figure7.svg. It is the pipeline's own output, not a screenshot, and not redrawn for this page. Open it on its own to pan and zoom a dense figure.What this figure draws, in its own words
Axes. Items Seized · Seizure Records · Incident Count
Panels. 6 in this figure.
- (a) Siberian Sturgeon Dominance in IWT Seizures
- (b) Remaining 9 Species - Seizures by IUCN Status
- (c) Distribution by CITES Appendix (excl. sturgeon)
- (d) Product Types (excl. sturgeon)
- (e) Top 9 Species by Seizure Volume
- (f) Market Categories (excl. sturgeon)
Labels, in the order the figure carries them. 595,487 items 83.6% of total 409 incidents · 116,709 items 16.4% of total 1821 incidents · Siberian sturgeon (Critically Endangered) · All other 9 species combined · 0 · 200k · 400k · 600k · 800k · 88,467 · 27,355 · 887 · 0 · 20k · 40k · 60k · 80k · VU · LC · EN · 271 · 269 · 265 · 140 · 134 · 119 · 76 · 34 · 28 · 25 · Meat · Teeth · Carvings · Ivory Carvings · Skins · Tusks · Garments · Claws · Trophies · Skin Pieces · 0 · 50 · 100 · 150 · 200 · 250 · 63,714 · 22,145 · 20,773 · 3,578 · 2,343 · 1,830 · 887 · 777 · 661 · Sperm Whale · Atlantic Walrus · Common Minke Whale · North American River Otter · Canada Lynx · Polar Bear · Blue Whale · Fin Whale · Beluga Whale · 0 · 20k · 40k · 60k · 790 · 500 · 320 · 46 · 11 · 2 · Personal · unknown · Commercial · Educational · Scientific · Medical · 0 · 200 · 400 · 600 · 800 · Appendix I 73.8% · Appendix III 19% · Appendix II 7.21% · Arctic Species in Illegal Wildlife Trade Seizures CITES confiscated/seized records • Data Period: 1980–2023 (43 years) · NOTE: Siberian sturgeon (Acipenser baerii) seizures account for 83.6% of total IWT volume (595,487 items in 409 incidents) and have been separated into panel (a) to avoid distorting the scale of other species. Panels (b-f) show remaining 9 species without sturgeon data. Despite Critically Endangered status, sturgeon is only listed under CITES Appendix II (controlled trade), creating enforcement loopholes that facilitate massive illegal caviar trade. Total dataset: 712,196 units, 2230 incidents (1980-2023). Unit caveat: quantities are the CITES quantity field summed across mixed units (kg, g, ml, specimens and unitless counts), so a share of "volume" is not a share of one physical quantity. Incident counts are dimensionless and comparable. · Data Source: CITES Trade Database (source='I' confiscated/seized) • IUCN Status: Latest assessments • CITES Appendix: Current listings
The numbers in this figure
10 rows from figure7_source_data.csv, read out of source_data.zip in the deposit. Not a copy: the page reads the archive a reader downloads, so the two cannot disagree. The filename carries the pipeline's figure number, which is not this figure's number; the archive's index states the binding.
The archive's digest: 3558736147e731a25c113309a5af49e534421701d97c1324ddf703aed3d45266
iucn_status is withheld in 10 of 10 rows. IUCN categories may not be redistributed; REBUILD-IUCN.md in the deposit rebuilds them from the IUCN's own release.
Rankrank | Scientific namescientific_name | Total quantitytotal_quantity | Seizure countseizure_count | Iucn statusiucn_status | Assessment idassessment_id | Cites appendixcites_appendix |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Acipenser baerii | 595487.4120000001 | 409 | withheld | 156718817 | II |
| 2 | Physeter macrocephalus | 63714.2 | 427 | withheld | 50382216 | I |
| 3 | Odobenus rosmarus | 22145.3 | 637 | withheld | 272356023 | III |
| 4 | Balaenoptera acutorostrata | 20772.909 | 269 | withheld | 50348265 | I |
| 5 | Lontra canadensis | 3578.0 | 126 | withheld | 164577078 | II |
| 6 | Lynx canadensis | 2343.0 | 187 | withheld | 275326314 | II |
| 7 | Ursus maritimus | 1830.0 | 142 | withheld | 14871490 | II |
| 8 | Balaenoptera musculus | 887.0 | 10 | withheld | 156923585 | I |
| 9 | Balaenoptera physalus | 777.2 | 11 | withheld | 50349982 | I |
| 10 | Delphinapterus leucas | 661.0 | 12 | withheld | 50352346 | II |
Cells marked withheld are IUCN categories this deposit may not redistribute; REBUILD-IUCN.md in the deposit rebuilds them from the IUCN's own release.
Binding curated
iwt-seizures · pipeline artifact figure7 · binding confirmed by Magnus Smárason on 2026-07-30
Binding evidence, as the record states it: figure7_source_data.csv has exactly 10 ranked rows. The caption reads 'Top ten'.
1. Data inputs derived
Computed from the figure pipeline's declared tables and query.
- Database schema
arctic- Tables
cites_trade_records filtered to source code I,iucn_assessments,cites_listings,species- Records consumed
- 2,606
- Database release
- CITES Trade Database v2025.1
- Extraction date
- 13 June 2025
- Redistributable
- No. IUCN Red List terms do not permit redistribution. Assessment identifiers and the extraction script are deposited instead.
The deposit carries 2,642 records with source code I across 39 species against the 2,606 this figure consumed, because the figure pipeline reads schema arctic (v1) and the deposit is built from arctic_v2. A reader regenerating this figure from the deposit will not reproduce these numbers exactly.
2. Processing steps derived
Each step is a path in the figure pipeline's own repository, which this site does not host. Regenerate and verify commands are literal. 1 of the 4 artifacts below is served here, and carries a download link; the rest are named so the chain can be read, not followed.
- Aggregate from Postgres.
visualizations/data_processing/analyze_iwt_seizures_pg.py - Intermediate JSON.
data/exports/iwt_seizures_analysis.json - Render.
visualizations/scripts/figure7_iwt_seizures.py - Frozen numeric source data.
visualizations/source_data/figure7_source_data.csv, download
Regenerate: ARCTIC_DATABASE_URL=... ./.venv/bin/python visualizations/make_all_figures.py
Verify: append --check. This regenerates the source data from the database and byte-diffs it against the frozen copy. Byte equality means the whole chain from database to figure numbers is deterministic.
3. LLM involvement: none
No generative model participated in producing this figure. The four artifacts above import only csv, json, numpy, pandas, plotly, pathlib, collections and the project's psycopg2 helper. No model API is called at any step, and there is no prompt because there is no model.
This is asserted mechanically rather than by declaration. visualizations/tests/test_no_model_calls.py reads this manifest, opens every script and generator it names, searches for model SDKs and API clients, and fails if it finds one. It covers every script and generator the manifest names.
The generative model in this project drafted 343 narrative prose sections about the 43 species. None of that prose reaches any figure, and none of it is displayed on this site: it is withheld pending expert review.
No review has begun, so there is no agreement statistic to report and no page reporting one. What can be checked is that the withholding is complete: the drafts are deposited unrendered as supplementary/species_narratives_no_citations.csv, every species page states how many of its sections are withheld, and the dataset page marks the table as unreviewed content.
4. Validation
Automated gate: passed. Byte-exact regeneration from the live database against the frozen source data.
Human review: no named person has signed this figure. withheld The automated gate establishes that the numbers are reproducible from the database. It establishes nothing about whether they are the right numbers to plot. That judgement requires a person, and no person has recorded it.
Known defects, two.
The published figure was computed on 1,000 of 2,606 records: a single unpaginated database page. Ranks below first were wrong, and walrus seizures, third by quantity on full data, were absent from the published top ten. Regenerated on all 2,606 records.
The quantity axis is a sum across records whose unit varies row by row. It is not a quantity in any single unit, and no total in a named unit is available from this source. See what changed.
This figure plots CITES trade records with source code I, not the illegal-trade seizure compilation used elsewhere on this site (919 source rows decontaminated to 225 attributable records). See the note on the figures index.