What’s Happening to Animals is a CRIME

An immense, increasingly sophisticated illegal trade in wildlife parts conducted by organized crime, coupled with antiquated enforcement methods, are decimating the world’s most beloved species including rhinos, tigers, and elephants on a scale never before seen. Much of the trade is driven by wealthy East Asian markets that have a seemingly insatiable appetite for wildlife parts.

Organized crime syndicates using sophisticated smuggling operations have penetrated even previously secure wildlife populations. Some of the elaborate methods include hidden compartments in shipping containers, rapidly changing of smuggling routes; and the use of e-commerce whose locations are difficult to detect.

Conservationist Elizabeth Bennett says, "We are failing to conserve some of the world’s most beloved and charismatic species. We are rapidly losing big, spectacular animals to an entirely new type of trade driven by criminalized syndicates. It is deeply alarming, and the world is not yet taking it seriously. When these criminal networks wipe out wildlife, conservation loses, and local people lose the wildlife on which their livelihoods often depend. "Unless we start taking wildlife crime seriously and allocating the commitment of resources appropriate to tackling sophisticated, well-funded, globally-linked criminal operations, population of some of the most beloved but economically prized, charismatic species will continue to wink out across their range, and, appallingly, altogether."

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