Be Noel Razafindrapaoly

1 Introduction Each year, hundreds of species are added to the world's growing list of wildlife threatened with extinction (IUCN 2024a). While humans have flourished, two-thirds of our closest primate relatives are in danger of extinction—including lemurs, the most threatened group of vertebrates on earth (IUCN 2024b).

1 INTRODUCTION Over the last 70 years, the global sea cucumber trade has developed into a multi-billion-dollar trade market spanning 70 countries (Anderson et al., 2011; Louw & Bűrgener, 2021; Purcell et al., 2012; Zamora et al., 2018; Zhang et al., 2015). The western Central Pacific and Indian Oceans produce a third of global dried sea cucumber product, with a market value of $1.95 billion per year (Conand, 2017; Toral-Granda et al., 2008; Tridge, 2020).

1 INTRODUCTION While billions of people rely on wild meat (Ingram et al., 2021), overexploitation remains the least studied driver of biodiversity loss (Mazor et al., 2018). In tropical regions, as much as two-thirds of meat comes from forest animals (Booth et al., 2021), and 39% of rural households in these regions hunt to feed their families (Nielsen et al., 2018).