COMBATING THE ILLEGAL ANIMAL TRADE
from the Environmental Investigation Agency UK
According to the Los Angeles Times: “Endangered species are covered by a complex web of local, state and international laws and treaties, which include a number of exceptions. For example it is legal to sell lion meat but not tiger meat in the United States and tigers can not sold internationally or between states but they can be sold within a state. Sentences for smuggling animals are much less than those for smuggling drugs. In the United States, first time offenders are fined $500 and second time offenders get six months of home confinement.
Bryan Christy wrote in National Geographic: “While no one knows exactly how large the illegal wildlife trade is, this much is certain: It's extraordinarily lucrative. Profit margins are the kind drug kingpins would kill for. Smugglers evade detection by hiding illegal wildlife in legal shipments, they bribe wildlife and customs officials, and they alter trade documents. Few are ever caught, and penalties are usually no more severe than a parking ticket. Wildlife trafficking may very well be the world's most profitable form of illegal trade, bar none. [Source: Bryan Christy, National Geographic, January 2010]
“Smugglers also exploit a loophole in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). With 175 countries as members, CITES is the world's primary treaty to protect wildlife, categorized into three groups according to how endan―gered a species is perceived to be. Appendix I animals, such as tigers and orangutans, are considered so close to extinction that their commercial trade is banned. Species in Appendix II are less vulnerable and may be traded under a permit system. Those in Appendix III are protected by the national legislation of the country that added them to the list. The CITES treaty has one gaping exception: Specimens bred in captivity do not receive the same protection as their wild counterparts. CITES, after all, applies to wild life.
“Proponents of captive breeding argue that it takes pressure off wild populations, decreases crime, satisfies international demand that will never go away, and puts money in the pockets of those willing to commit to "farming" wildlife. But these benefits only hold in countries with enforcement policies strong enough to deter rule breakers. In practice, smugglers establish fake breeding facilities, then claim that animals and plants poached from the wild are captive bred. Fake captive breeding is just one of the techniques Anson Wong used in running a secret front operation for one of the world's largest wildlife-smuggling syndicates.
For the complete article from which the material here is derived see “The Kingpin” by Bryan Christy, National Geographic, nationalgeographic.com
Hundreds of Rangers Die Combating the Global Wildlife Trade
Amelie Bottollier-Depois of AFP wrote: Hundreds of rangers have been killed over recent years as poachers stop at nothing in their quest for lucrative animal parts such as ivory and rhino horn, according to experts at a global convention on protecting wildlife in Bangkok. The death toll among the rangers has risen as the slaughter of elephants and rhinos reaches record levels -- with photographs of carcasses stripped of horns or tusks stirring public outcry. [Source: Amelie Bottollier-Depois, AFP, March 9, 2013]
At least 1,000 rangers have been killed in 35 different countries over the last decade, said Sean Willmore, president of the International Ranger Federation (IRF), adding that the real global figure may be between 3-5,000. "There is an undeclared war going on on the frontline of conservation," he told AFP citing the example of a group of 50 rangers in the Democratic Republic of Congo who stumbled across a 5,000-strong militia group out poaching armed with AK47s. And while attacks by lions or elephants make their work "dangerous enough", he says 75 percent of the dead were killed by traffickers, with their lack of equipment, training and low wages weighing against them.
Overwhelmed by the Task of Combating the Illegal Animal Trade in the United States
Thomas Curwen wrote in Los Angeles Times: “In the United States the Fish and Wildlife Service is overwhelmed by the task. Nationwide there are 199 Fish and Wildlife special agents, responsible for investigating illegal trade and the deaths of protected species, and 115 wildlife inspectors, who focus on import and export regulations. (In Southern California, there are six agents and 13 inspectors.) Given these numbers, it's not surprising that most agents estimate that only one-tenth of 1 percent of the illegal wildlife brought into the country is intercepted. [Source: Thomas Curwen, Los Angeles Times, June 18, 2009]
“The initial budget was $11 million. Terry Grosz, at the time the endangered species desk officer for the Division of Law Enforcement, remembers being run ragged during those early days. Inadequate staffing and critics who wanted the Endangered Species Act declared unconstitutional added to the burden.
“The breaking point for Grosz occurred when 11,000 pounds of green sea turtle meat was intercepted in New York City. The importer said it belonged to the one turtle species that was not endangered. Grosz thought otherwise but had no way of proving it. The shipment was allowed into the country, a bitter loss that eventually led to the creation of a forensic laboratory in Ashland, Ore., that could provide DNA tests -- and positive identification -- of seized items. The lab opened in 1989 and is the only one of its kind in the world.
“There was a time -- 1984, to be exact, in testimony to Congress -- when Grosz argued that the illegal trade could be stopped. Nowadays he isn't so sure. "Given the poverty and the corruption that exist in other parts of the world, there will always be pressure to resort to the illegal wildlife trade," he says. "People have to eat. When people are hungry, this is what they do."
Earth League International — the Cloak and Dagger Conservation N.G.O.
Earth League International (ELI) is a conservation N.G.O., founded and headed by Andrea Crosta, that infiltrates wildlife-trafficking rings to not just save wildlife but to bring the rings down.Tad Friend wrote in The New Yorker: ELI intends to stop the global trade in rhino horn, elephant ivory, shark fins, lizards, ploughshare tortoises, Queen Alexandra’s birdwing butterflies, and more than seven thousand other species. Its goal is not to catch poachers but to penetrate transnational smuggling networks that, by some estimates, bring in more than a hundred billion dollars a year. [Source Tad Friend, The New Yorker, May 2023]
A fifty-four-year-old Italian with pale-blue eyes and a wistful air, Crosta shares a one-bedroom apartment in Marina del Rey with his rescue dog, Argos. Like many animal lovers, he is frequently disappointed by humans. “Andrea is one of my favorite people,” Jane Goodall told me. “He’s passionate, he’s courageous—what he’s doing is very dangerous—he loves dogs, and he won’t ever, ever give up.” Preoccupied with his next counterstrike, Crosta often goes all day without eating, then, as night falls, finds himself eying the ground mackerel in Argos’s bowl.
ELI’s annual budget is just three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, but its operations have led to the arrest of an alleged jaguar-fang ring in Bolivia; helped the Mexican government pursue the Cartel of the Sea, a network in Baja California that trafficked sea cucumbers and totoaba; and sparked at least seven ongoing investigations by the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Department of Homeland Security, and the F.B.I. These agencies now treat ELI as trusted colleagues. Chris Egner, the Homeland Security agent who works most closely with Crosta’s team, told me, “Our partnership with ELI is invaluable. Their access to these particular criminal networks is simply something we can’t do.”
The problem for ELI is that, while most people treat nature as an inexhaustible resource, the traffickers know better. One ELI worker said: “They all say there’s less and less rhino horns and shark fins, so we have to grab all we can before it’s finished.”
Infiltrating the Illegal Wildlife Trade
On one Earth League International operation, Tad Friend wrote in The New Yorker: The Korean barbecue joint near L.A. wasn’t a crime scene, exactly. But on a muggy fall afternoon two of Mexico’s top wildlife traffickers sat in the back, eating lunch and talking shop. One of their most profitable lines of business is smuggling the buoyancy bladders of an endangered fish called the totoaba. The scab-colored bladders are remarkably yucky-looking, and the effort to harvest them from the Sea of Cortez has driven the vaquita porpoise to the verge of extinction. But they taste great in soup and make your skin glow! Or so the folk wisdom has it. They’ve become costly enough in China—as much as fifty thousand dollars a kilogram—that they are often bestowed as gifts or bribes or simply cherished as collectibles, like Fabergé eggs.[Source Tad Friend, The New Yorker, May 2023]
The traffickers, Harry and Tommy, were Chinese. Harry, tall and pudgy, stayed bent over his chopsticks, while Tommy often stood to pace and talk on his phone. Both men believed that their host, Billy, a friend of several years, was a Hong Kong businessman who wanted to use their smuggling route. In fact, Billy, who was recording their conversation on his iPhone, was an operative for Earth League International.
At a table across the room, Crosta sat monitoring the action with Mark Davis, his director of intelligence. They watched as Billy stepped out for a smoke. “I always think, This is the time to leave your phone behind, because you could capture a great conversation,” Crosta said. He glanced over and laughed: Harry and Tommy were mutely gorging themselves on bulgogi. “I have almost no emotions toward those people,” he said. “They are in the business of death, and I do dislike them for that, but it would be counterproductive to hate.”
After lunch, Crosta and Davis drove to a nearby boba shop and waited outside to debrief Billy. A boyish Jack-of-all-trades, Billy speaks Cantonese, Mandarin, several Chinese dialects, English, and a bit of Spanish and French, and has worked undercover on five continents. He has a knack for seeming rich, venal, and slightly dense—the perfect customer. He bounced up the sidewalk and began his report: “It’s going great! They were a little cautious at the beginning. They asked, ‘Where is the boss?’ ” Billy’s boss had been played by Larry, another undercover, but Larry was travelling that week. “I said, ‘Oh, he got COVID.’ ”
“Nice!” Mark Davis said, admiring the improv and offering a second take: “Oh, he’s dead.” Davis retired from the F.B.I. in 2016, after thirty years as the agency’s preëminent undercover agent. He played some two hundred roles and ingratiated himself with drug cartels led by Pablo Escobar and by El Chapo. Wiry, with a white mustache and soul patch and earring holes from past performances, Davis has a surf-bum vibe that’s as disarming as it is misleading. He works for ELI without pay.
Once Harry and Tommy loosened up, Billy said, they described a variety of schemes carried out by their associates, including importing sea cucumbers to San Diego and manufacturing counterfeit Gucci bags. They also elaborated on the way they smuggled Chinese nationals into the U.S., via Macau and Ecuador.
Crosta knew that these details would interest Homeland Security, a vital consideration for ELI. Broadly speaking, law-enforcement agencies care less about animals than about “convergence”—the other crimes that wildlife traffickers commit. The bootleggers from the Golden Triangle who smuggle pangolins and bears into China also smuggle opium and methamphetamines; the group that brings monkeys to Europe from northern Morocco also conveys hash, counterfeit goods, and people. Crosta aims to harness the agencies’ agenda to his own. “You won’t scare people if you arrest them for wildlife trafficking,” he said at the restaurant. “You have to charge them with human smuggling and money laundering and put them away for twenty years.” Davis added, “I don’t care if these motherfuckers start dealing cocaine instead—we just want to get them off of trading on Mother Earth.”
500 Arrested in Global Wildlife Trafficking Sting
In December 2023, Associated Press reported: Interpol and the World Customs Organization they seized 53 primates, four big cats and more than 1,300 birds, as well as some 300 kilograms of ivory, thousands of turtle eggs, and rhino horns, leopard skins, and lion teeth and paws in their sweeping annual crackdown on wildlife and timber trafficking that this year covered 133 countries. [Source: Associated Press, December 12, 2023]
Interpol said it coordinated around 500 arrests worldwide from October 2 to 27. More than 2,000 confiscations of animals and plants were made. This year’s operation marks the highest participation in Operation Thunder since its inception in 2017. The live animals were destined for the pet trade, egg harvesting or as a source of meat, while the wildlife parts are used for jewelry or rituals.
“Important and endangered animals, birds and plants are being put at risk of extinction by wildlife and timber traffickers," said Interpol Secretary General Jürgen Stock. "These appalling crimes not only deprive the world of unique animals and plants but also countries of their natural assets.” As part of the operation, hundreds of vehicles, including cars, trucks, and cargo ships, were searched at checkpoints across all regions. Specialized sniffer dogs and X-ray scanners were deployed to detect hidden wildlife and camouflaged timber shipments. Hundreds of parcels, suitcases, vehicles, boats, and cargo transporters were examined.
Interpol stresses the links between environmental crime and other forms of crime, including violence, corruption, and financial crime. WCO highlighted the critical role of customs in disrupting criminal networks through strict border controls, intelligence-sharing, and technological advancements. WCO Secretary General Kunio Mikuriya said this involves “enforcing strict controls at borders” to thwart traffickers and “intelligence-sharing, championing collaboration and adopting technological advancements” in customs operations. Operation Thunder is an annual joint-operation coordinated by Interpol and the WCO, with the backing of intergovernmental organizations.
Coronavirus Slows the Illegal Wildlife Trafficking, Temporarily
About three months into the coronavirus pandemic, Rachel Nuwer wrote in the New York Times: “The spread of the coronavirus has stalled economic activity, halted travel and locked down some cross-border trade. Another sector that’s feeling the pinch is criminals trafficking illegally in poached wildlife. ““Security is too heavy at the border. Products can’t go out,” said a person in Vietnam involved in the trade. That person spoke to an undercover investigator who was involved in a new report on the state of the illegal wildlife trade. [Source: Rachel Nuwer, New York Times, April 29, 2020]
“The pandemic has prevented organized criminal gangs in Southeast Asian countries from moving large quantities of ivory and pangolin scales into China. But any limits on the illegal wildlife trade are likely to be temporary. “There’s too much money to be made from these products, and there’s too many people involved for this to have a significant long term impact,” said Sarah Stoner, a co-author of the report and director of intelligence at the Wildlife Justice Commission, an international foundation based in The Hague, Netherlands, that works to dismantle illegal wildlife trade.
“She and other experts say that while the coronavirus’s limits on travel and business could be an opportunity for law enforcement to disrupt criminal networks, the pandemic’s economic toll could attract more people to the trade. “We are tracking significant amounts of new trafficking activity in multiple countries, which seems to indicate that traffickers are both still very much in operation and also actively seeking ways to adapt and thrive in the new normal,” said Tim Wittig, the head of intelligence for United for Wildlife, a nonprofit led by Prince William to fight wildlife trafficking.
“The Wildlife Justice Commission maintains an intelligence database of thousands of traffickers and dealers around the world. Undercover investigators working with the commission keep regular contact with a number of these criminals. The commission’s new report summarizes conversations, from January through April, between investigators and around 20 people involved in the trade in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, India and Mozambique.
“These are desperate times for illegal wildlife traffickers, the conversations showed. Vietnam closed its border with China on February 1. At first, Ms. Stoner and her colleagues found, wildlife traders mostly dismissed this development and still guaranteed door-to-door delivery to their customers — something normally included in the price of everything from ivory to tiger parts. Traders repeatedly assured customers that “delivery will be fine after a few days.” By the end of February, things had changed. “You can get the products here,” one Vietnamese trader told the investigators, “but if you want to send them to China, you could be waiting for months.”
“Tighter security and even closed borders have left some traders offering deep discounts on their illegal goods, while others have temporarily frozen operations. Retailers in Southeast Asian countries also fear that the lack of Chinese tourists — their primary customers — will put them out of business. Many traders work with corrupt airport personnel to clear their products through customs. But with flights canceled and diverted — and security increased — trusted smuggling routes are no longer guaranteed.
“Not all illegal trade has ground to a halt. Throughout March and April, Chinese authorities have continued to seize large shipments of rhino horns and pangolin scales crossing into China by land from Vietnam. Traffickers told investigators that they are closely following developments at the border. Many are eager to offload their growing stockpiles. In Africa, on the other hand, the virus may wind up facilitating rather than stalling illegal activity. Investigators learned that several heads of poaching gangs in Mozambique are planning to take advantage of reduced ranger patrols and the lack of tourists in Kruger National Park in neighboring South Africa. Poaching bosses can also expect a glut of new recruits in the coming months, said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. “Because of Covid’s vast economic impacts, a lot of people will be driven into many forms of illicit economies.”
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons
Text Sources: National Geographic, Natural History magazine, Smithsonian magazine, Wikipedia, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, The Guardian, Top Secret Animal Attack Files website, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, AFP, The Economist, BBC, and various books and other publications.
Last updated February 2025