Wildlife Crime: An Overview of the 4th Largest Transnational Crime

Introduction

In Vietnam you can buy tiger bone wine, a traditional medicine that proposes to improve masculinity and cure a variety of medical ailments. This product is made from the skeletal remains of tigers, a highly endangered species. The retail price of tiger bones is around $10,000, and with a skeleton weighing about 9.2 kg, that’s a net price of around $92,000,000 per tiger (May, 2017; Williams et al., 2015).

Tigers aren’t the only wildlife being illegally harvested and traded. The illegal trade in logging, fisheries, and wildlife amounts to $72.5-216.4 billion (May, 2017). It shouldn’t then be surprising that wildlife crime is the fourth largest transnational crime, behind only counterfeiting, drugs, and human trafficking. Unfortunately, it isn’t well known by the world’s populace, and the lack of attention could cause serious and far-reaching consequences in the near future.

Background

Wildlife crime is the illegal trading, selling, harvesting or otherwise exploitation of plants and animals. It is generally broken down into three distinctive parts: illegal logging, fishery exploitation, and wildlife trafficking. This paper focuses mainly on the last part, wildlife trafficking. Each day thousands of animals are captured or killed in an effort to receive monetary gain.

The problem of wildlife trafficking has been around for centuries. In the Elizabethan era there were public zoos in Britain and across Europe (BBC, n.d.). In the 19th century the Traveling Menagerie was a mobile zoo and circus that toured animals across the US. Almost all of these animals were acquired in their native ranges, and then brought into captivity. However, almost all of this trade was legal under the laws of the time.

It wasn’t until people started noticing a sharp decline in species used for commercial hunting, also known as game species, that there was a movement to protect wildlife. In the US this movement resulted in the Lacey Act of 1900 (USFWS, n.d.). Originally designed to protect game birds such as waterfowl and egrets, the act made it illegal to hunt certain birds for the purpose of sale, as well as the transportation of wildlife across state lines. Over the years the Lacey Act has changed. The acts main purpose now is to make it illegal to acquire, posses, or sell any plant or animal taken illegally. However, it didn’t make the killing or capture itself illegal.

Shortly after the Lacey Act was introduced the US signed the Convention for the Protection of Migratory Birds. This piece of legislation would later become the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA), which protects birds across the US from hunting and exploitation (Audubon Society, 2016). The MBTA strengthened the protection of birds under the Lacey Act, but it didn’t address the problems faced by non-avian species.

Meanwhile, other countries were dealing with similar problems. In 1948 the International Union for the Protection of Nature was created. Later the NGO would be renamed the International Union for the Conservation of Nature or IUCN for short. The mission of IUCN is to work with societies across the globe to conserve biodiversity and encourage the use of natural resources in a sustainable way (IUCN, 2017). IUCN is in charge of safeguarding and implementing several major conservation agreements, including the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

The United States was a signing member of CITES and agreed to implement legislation to comply with the Convention (Vaughn, 2001). Thus the Endangered Species Act (ESA) was born. The ESA protects plant and animal species, as well as their habitat, that are at risk of extinction(NOAA, 2013). It has been the lead protector of species in the US since its creation in 1973. It has also made it possible to prosecute wildlife smugglers by making it illegal to import, sell, acquire, or possess the parts of endangered species, regardless of the law in the country the animal was acquired in.

Unfortunately, the passing of legislation did not put an end to wildlife crime. When an issue such as this one has such a long history, you will never be able to completely eliminate it. You can work tirelessly to find innovative solutions and enforce the legislation. By doing so the world might one day be able to make wildlife trafficking and trade one of the least common transnational crimes. For now though, wildlife crime remains a very important issue.

Wildlife Crime Today

Today wildlife crime is bigger than ever. As species become rarer their market price increases. Additionally, as technology shrinks the world, it becomes easier to buy and sell. The lack of resources for enforcement makes it very easy for smugglers and traders to conduct their business (Fears, 2014). Most suppliers don’t bother even using the DarkWeb, and instead just use code words to conduct trade on popular e-commerce sites such as eBay, Google Shop, and Etsy (Nuwer, 2014).

Technology has also increased the live animal trade. Social media sites facilitate the spread of images and videos that have lead to an increase in visibility of ‘cute’ animals, and is increasing the demand of exotic pets (Nekaris et al., 2013). The popular tourism trend known as “animal selfies” has also led to an increase in the trade of live animals to be used as photo props. (Daly, 2017). All of this on top of the demand for rare and exotic wildlife by collectors who buy and collect rare species as others might art or fine wine (Nuwer, 2014).

According to CITES (2014), the United States is one of the top importers and exporters of wildlife. Some of this trade is legal, and a lot of it illegal, but whether legal or illegal a large portion of it doesn’t even stay in the US. Smugglers use the US as an intermediary port through which to export their goods to their final destination (CITES, 2014; Goyenechea & Indenbaum, 2015). This gives the US an opportunity to hit the wildlife trade hard, but sadly the lack of funding for law enforcement has made it almost impossible to keep up with the large volume of wildlife being smuggled through US borders (Fears, 2014). This trend is common throughout most of the world. The World’s governments aren’t putting enough resources towards stopping the fourth largest transnational crime.

In the United States, and many other countries, wildlife trafficking is strictly regulated. However, it isn’t completely banned. There is a thriving legal wildlife trade that contributes about $6 billion per year to the US (Goyenechea and Indenbaum, 2015). The regulations on this legal trade come with fees and taxes which usually increase the incentives to smuggle the profitable items to sell them at a lower price. Reptile skins, bush-meat, hunting trophies, decorative shells and feathers, bones and horns, and dense mammal fur are just some of the items that are in high demand everyday (Roe et al., 2003).

Although the United States is a big player in the wildlife trade, there are far from being the only one. Species are primarily exported from South-east Asia, Australia, Russia, South America, and Africa (CITES, 2014; Roe et al., 2003). They are imported mainly in Europe, the US, Russia, China, Korea, and the Middle East (CITES, 2014). Species end up going all over the world as they are traded, bought, and sold.

Many of the animals end up dying before they even get to their destination, if they weren’t killed outright for any valuable parts (Cantü Guzmán, 2007).

The overall lack of improvement is quickly becoming a real problem, and one that might be irreversible. Recently scientists have discussed the possibility that the earth has entered a new epoch in the geological time scale. This would move us from the Holocene to the Anthropocene (Vaughan, 2016). This epoch would be characterized by human caused changes to the environment, such changing atmospheric composition, micro plastic particles in our water, and nuclear isotopic signatures from radioactive testing (Vaughan, 2016).

One of these human caused changes is the rapid loss of biodiversity. In the last 40 years we have lost about 50% of Earth’s wildlife, a rate that puts us close to previous mass extinction events (Ceballos et al., 2017). The current rate of extinction has us at 2 species per year for the past 100 years. While this may seem like a low number, when you look at Earth’s past geological history, it should have take up to 10,000 years for all those species to have been lost (Ceballos et al., 2017). We need solutions to this trend.

Solutions

In order to combat wildlife trade, you have to understand the main drivers. Why does wildlife trade occur? Taking the economics approach, you can break the issue up into supply and demand. Through an understanding of how the supply and demand of wildlife products work, you can understand how to best stop the trade.

The supply of wildlife and wildlife products is very complex. Part of this is due to the individual nature of the animals themselves. You can’t very easily look at wildlife trade as a whole market, each species will have its own unique market based off of the inherent properties of that species (Oldfield, 2003). In order to best combat wildlife trade, you need an in-depth knowledge of each species market so that individual and tailored plans can be made. However, when looking at the data that has been collected from some of the world’s hotspots of illegal trade, some patterns show up.

One of the major trends is at the local economic level. Wildlife trade often happens in areas of low economic development (Oldfield, 2003). In these areas the locals often have an abundance of wildlife, but a shortage of high-income opportunities. This might lead them to supplement their income through hunting and trading wildlife. In the locals’ eyes this is a good alternative, as entry to the market is fairly easy; all you need is either a gun or other knife. It is then easy to stay in the market as bullets are cheap, and the effort it takes to hunt, at least while the game is plenty, is low (McNamara et al., 2016).

In order to combat this, there needs to be incentives not to hunt and trade. McNamara et al. (2016) believe that the bush-meat markets of Ghana show indicators of supply-side economics. Through a series of surveys they found that locals were less likely to hunt when they had more choices. This was often achieved when there were more educated individuals, who would be more likely to receive higher-income employment. They showed that individuals would enter the bush-meat market, regardless of sale price, as long as the opportunity cost of hunting remained low (McNamara et al., 2016).

One way to increase the opportunity costs of hunting is through creating ownership and property rights on wildlife, which are a type of common-pool resource. This leads people to use wildlife in a way that is not sustainable. However, should the community feel as if they own the wildlife it might increase their value in ways beyond hunting. A good model for this is in Namibia, where community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) has led to a successful decrease in poaching (Roe, 2015). Here the wildlife is owned by the government, so that they may set quotas for hunting, but the wildlife is under the care of custodians who live in the local communities. This allows for community ownership of the animals. All of the revenue generated from the hunting or viewing of these animals is then put back into the community (Roe, 2015). In this way the animals are much more valuable if they are not poached.

Programs like the one in Namibia have enjoyed a lot of success in the last several decades. However, they are starting to once again see an increase in poaching. Part of this is due to a lack of response by law enforcement (Roe, 2015). Local law enforcement is often susceptible to corruption, and is usually underfunded and understaffed. Additionally, it is a very risky job to be a conservation officer or wildlife ranger as you are often telling people with guns and other weapons that they are breaking the law. This leads to very little enforcement of the law regarding wildlife, which is often seen as a small crime (Wellsmith, 2011).

Another reason for increased poaching efforts is due to a constantly changing market for wildlife products. The demand market for wildlife products is highly varied, and parts and products are used in anything from fashion to medicine (Oldfield, 2003). Additionally, items made from rare animals are often seen as status symbols, and areas where this is common, such as China and South-East Asia, have recently seen an increase in wealth (S.N., 2015). As more people can afford to buy these status symbols the price of the items increases, and thus the demand increases. The historic market for fur coats is a great example. While currently out of fashion, fur coats were once seen as the height of sophistication by the wealthy and elite. However, when there was a decrease in total income, public awareness campaigns, high taxes, and/or substitutive goods like fake fur there was a decline in fur sales (Mahe, 2012). All of these events can be simulated or created in similar wildlife markets.

There are many ways to try and combat wildlife crime. Enforcement of current legislation, understanding of markets, acknowledgment of and a response to environmental justice, and the education of consumers can all have a significant impact if used correctly. It is up to governments and non-governmental organizations alike to work together across borders to implement strategies that will achieve optimal results and affect change. However, it also on local consumers to be responsible and knowledgeable when buying anything that may even remotely look as if it came from an animal. Through hard and innovative work by people across the globe we can stop wildlife crime.

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