Humans are responsible for transporting plants, animals, and their associated pathogens through global commerce. For instance, each year 250 million live animals and 300 million garden and house plants are imported into the United States alone. The anthropogenic transport and trade in wildlife is now widely cited as a major threat to biodiversity, homogenizing distinct flora and fauna, introducing invasive species and parasites, and depleting wild populations. As a result, there is a need to better understand the scope of this trade and its cascading ecological consequences. Moreover, the rules and regulations regarding the transport of wildlife and plants are varied, and in some cases, lacking. Ecologists need to begin discussing how we can identify potentially harmful species or practices, how we convey this information to managers and government agencies, and how to design policies that prevent the entry of harmful species without prohibiting the importation of all species. The goal of this session is to provide a synthetic review of the scope and consequences of the commercial trade of several major taxonomic groups, and to generate discussion about how policy and research can be used to manage commercial trade.