The global falcon market: what CITES data actually show

A market with no reliable global figure

Any estimate of the "size of the global falcon market" in billions of dollars, occasionally seen online, comes from sources with no verifiable methodology and should be disregarded. To date, no public, sourced market study puts a figure on this sector as a whole. What does exist, however, is official international trade statistics on protected species, maintained by the CITES Secretariat, which give a partial but solid picture of who trades what, and in what proportions.

What CITES statistics say about the United Arab Emirates

The United Arab Emirates is by far the world's leading importer of raptors within the meaning of CITES: more than 75,000 specimens imported between 1975 and 2020, or about 40.8% of the world's legal raptor trade over that period. Qatar (7.4%) and Saudi Arabia (3.7%) follow, well behind, with Kuwait at 3.1%. Together, these four Gulf countries thus account for more than half of the world's legal raptor trade recorded by CITES.

Looking at the species breakdown for the UAE, the split leans heavily toward hybrids (more than 50,000 specimens over the period), followed by gyrfalcons (more than 30,000), then saker falcons (more than 21,000) and peregrine falcons (around 13,000) - the species that gives the market its name but is, by volume, just one component among others.

What auction prices show, and what they do not

The prices reported in the press (one-off records between $400,000 and $470,000 for a white gyrfalcon, seen at auctions in Saudi Arabia and the UAE) are real but misleading if taken as an average price: these are edition records, for exceptional birds, and variability from one auction to the next is significant. The usual high end, excluding records, runs more in the tens of thousands of dollars. There is no single "market" price: price depends on bloodline, hunting or competition record, species, and the specific auction edition.

The institutions that structure this market

The falcon trade in the Gulf is organised around a small number of reference institutions: the Abu Dhabi Falcon Hospital and the Doha Falcon Hospital on the veterinary care and follow-up side, EFCAD (Abu Dhabi Falconers' Club, organiser of the President Cup) and the Saudi Falcons Club (organiser of the Riyadh auctions) on the competition and auction side, and the Mohammed Bin Rashid Falconry Cup as a major sporting event. These institutions are not commercial players in the usual sense: they are the required points of passage for anyone who wants to understand where Western supply actually meets Gulf demand.

A structurally regulated market, not a free market

The point most often underestimated by newcomers to this sector: this is at no point a free-trade market. The peregrine falcon, like most of the species concerned, falls under CITES Appendix I (Annex A of the EU regulation), the most protected category. Every international transaction therefore requires, ahead of price and negotiation, an import permit obtained before the export permit (see this knowledge centre's regulatory dossiers). The falcon "market" is thus, above all, a market of documentary compliance: two buyers ready to pay the same price for the same bird do not necessarily have the same access to the transaction, depending on whether their country of residence has a responsive CITES authority or not.

What this dossier does not claim to measure

These CITES figures cover declared legal trade. They measure neither illegal trade, nor transactions internal to a single country, nor the value of associated services (training, equipment, veterinary care, transport), which weigh significantly in the real economy of Gulf falconry without appearing in any species import/export statistic.