Wildlife Trafficking

A Deconstruction of the Crime, the Victims, and the Offenders

T. Wyatt

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781137269232
• eBook ISBN: 9781137269249
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book provides a unique, comprehensive exploration of the scale, scope, threats and drivers of wildlife trafficking. It also undertakes a distinctive exploration of who the victims and offenders of wildlife trafficking are as well as analysing the stakeholders who are involved in collaborative efforts to end this devastating green crime.

1

Introduction

Trading wildlife is not a new phenomenon. Humans have been reliant on wildlife for food and shelter throughout history. It could be said then that the use of wildlife – both non-human animals and plants – is engrained within human cultures. This relationship with wildlife has led and is currently connected to the overexploitation of species. Historically, there is evidence of this overexploitation. For instance, in the US in the 1800s, both Atlantic Sturgeon and Shortnose Sturgeon were hunted for meat and caviar to such levels that by the early 1900s the populations had dropped severely and fishing was greatly reduced (Sweka et al. 2006). Populations began to recover and by 1980 commercial fishing operations of Atlantic Sturgeon were again at high levels (Sweka et al. 2006). This only lasted until 1996 when populations again fell, and a moratorium was placed on commercial and recreational fishing (Sweka et al. 2006). Fishing of the Shortnose Sturgeon only lasted until 1967, when it was listed on the Endangered Species Preservation Act (American Museum of Natural History 2010). Similarly, in New Zealand with the arrival of Europeans in the 1830s, pervasive logging of the native Kauri trees led to their populations greatly dwindling (Terra Nature 2003). Local construction, the exporting of logs, clearing for agriculture and fires have resulted in less than 1 per cent of the original forests surviving (Terra Nature 2003). Yet despite the clear loss of these forests, Kauri trees were not protected until 1973 (Terra Nature 2003).

Regulations and laws to curb such destruction of wildlife have been in existence for hundreds of years, although in the examples above, none were put into place until quite late (Lyster 1985). Even with these laws though, humans continue to threaten the survival of other species, largely through consumption. As Lyster (1985) argues, a critical juncture has been reached where humans now have the capability to decimate entire populations of wildlife and because of this destructive capacity, more intense initiatives at the international level must be undertaken. As will be detailed, measures to protect species from extinction are being taken, but regardless of this, consumption of wildlife thwarts the restrictions and still threatens the survival of many species. This book will explore the intricacies that the illegal trade in wildlife encompasses and the current international efforts to stop this devastating green crime.

To begin, this introductory chapter provides the background information regarding the illegal wildlife trade and the green criminological perspective that sets the foundation for the entire text. First, the issue of definition is addressed detailing all the aspects of the smuggling operation, that is poaching, harvesting, collecting, transporting, exporting, importing, processing and selling. An overview of what has been and is being trafficked is given as well as the estimated numbers that are trafficked. The list will include, but is not limited to, live non-human animals and plants, and their products and derivatives. This leads to a discussion of the challenges in estimating both the scale and the profit of the illegal wildlife trade due to the differing value of the ‘commodity’ along the smuggling chain and the particular dynamics of the dark figure of this crime. The green criminological context in which the book is framed is then laid out. The introduction concludes with an outline of the entire book, with brief details of the contents of each chapter.

Definitions

The illegal wildlife trade is a multi-stage smuggling operation which encompasses numerous activities that will each be defined here. Wildlife is taken to comprise all non-human animals and plants that are not companion or domesticated animals. This means that ‘pets’ are not wildlife, nor are livestock, but that zoo animals and others that are being farmed, yet are not truly domesticated, are also wildlife. This would include bears and tigers, for instance, which are now the focus of farming initiatives. Wildlife does include all plants and trees as well as propagated individuals.

In the illegal wildlife trade, wildlife is first poached, collected or harvested. Poaching is the act of killing the non-human animal to use it in one of the various ways that will be detailed below. The killing is accomplished in a variety of ways, depending upon the species of the non-human animal. Poaching of game meat, such as deer, sometimes involves the use of dogs to flush out the prey so that it can then be shot. Other non-human animals are also killed by guns. For instance, elephant and rhinoceros poaching often involves weapons, though in some instances rather than rifles or shotguns, tranquiliser guns are used to only subdue the individual animal and then the tusk or horn is taken while it is still alive. Poaching can also involve snares and traps that either kill the animal or hold it until it can be killed. This is the case when poaching fur-bearing mammals and ungulates for traditional medicines. Pits are also used to capture and then transport or kill terrestrial non-human animals. Fish and marine mammals are obviously caught with nets and hooks. There are undoubtedly other means by which wildlife is poached in addition to those listed here.

However, not all non-human animals are killed within the illegal wildlife trade. The collection of wildlife occurs when non-human animals or plants are taken alive, again to be used in various ways. Often the live wildlife is captured with nets or traps and then transported or smuggled further along the smuggling chain. For some species, the young or eggs are targeted for ease of capture and smuggling. For some non-human animals, like the pangolin, being kidnapped is unfortunately quite simple as they roll into a protective ball to escape predators. If that predator is a human, they can easily place the pangolin in a sack to be transported to the market or restaurant to where they are bound. Plants too are taken alive and then smuggled to their final destination. Harvesting refers to the routine killing of non-human animals or plants in order to supply both the legal and illegal markets. Harvesting is often the term used when trappers hunt furbearers. It is also the language used when cutting timber – trees are harvested, both legally and illegally, to be used for building houses and furniture, for fuel etc.

The language defined here is the terminology typically seen in texts and heard in the media. Arguably though, the words chosen desensitise the listener or reader from the harm that is taking place. Non-human animals are ‘killed’ or ‘harvested’ rather than ‘murdered’ – a word reserved only for human victims. Non-human animals are also ‘collected’ or ‘captured’, but as Sollund (2011) proposes, this is akin to kidnapping and can certainly be referred to as such. The vocabulary employed immediately sets non-human animals and plants apart from people and makes them the ‘other’, thus detaching them from humans. To avoid this distancing, insensitive or ‘othering’ terms will not be used if possible. This is also the reason for using the term ‘non-human animal’. After all, humans are animals too and adopting this term is intended to remove the separation that humans have created between themselves and other species.

This defines only the first point of the smuggling operation. Once taken, either alive or dead, the wildlife is then transported further towards the market and final buyer. This may be directly to a market, or for wildlife that is used to make products, to a processing place, which will be discussed shortly. In either case, the transportation may take place internally within one country, transnationally between adjacent countries or internationally between countries long distances from each other. The transnational and international transportation is where the smuggling occurs, as the wildlife is secreted across borders, avoiding proper Customs and Borders inspections. If headed for a market or for a processing facility, either way, depending upon the tactics employed, this may involve fraudulent documentation. One aspect of this may be to mis-label the species, so documentation shows one species that is allowed to be traded when in fact the actual wildlife is another similar species. In these and other instances with fraudulent documentation, what is actually illegal then gets transferred into the legal sphere. This means that the wildlife is then not physically hidden, but made to appear legitimate.

In international instances of smuggling, the forged documentation must account for either or both the export and the import of the wildlife. This is particularly the case when this involves a species listed within the appendices of the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which requires an export permit for Appendix II species and an export and import permit for Appendix I species. Therefore, the country of origin of the wildlife must allow the export of the wildlife, and for Appendix I species, the destination country must also have given permission for the wildlife to be imported. In cases of transiting through a country, CITES species will need a re-export permit indicating it has been transferred between countries. For the domestic wildlife trade, the documentation required varies greatly by country and in some cases may not be required at all. Many countries, though, require hunting permits for non-human animals to be killed. This is also often the case for cutting trees on public land; some government agency most likely has to give permission for the trees to be taken.

When forged or fraudulent documentation is not the tactic employed, the smuggling will entail much more involved means of secreting the wildlife during their journey. Again, this is largely species dependent, but these tactics are known to be used: secret compartments on planes, trains, boats and vehicles; mixed in with other cargo; hidden on people’s bodies or within their luggage; and sent in diplomatic post that is not subject to Custom’s inspections.

Links to drug trafficking are clear at this point in the chain as numerous law enforcement agencies have confiscated wildlife with drugs. For instance, Colombian and Mexican drug cartels have been stopped at the US border with shipments of wildlife products mixed in with drugs (UN 2002). The Colombian groups are even known to put the smuggled cocaine inside of boa constrictor snakes (UN 2002). Elephant tusks have been confiscated with hashish inside and exotic birds have been in shipments of methamphetamine pills (Wyler and Sheik 2008). Methamphetamine has also been linked to the poaching of abalone in South Africa (Schoofs 2007). According to the Brazilian National Network Against the Trafficking of Wild Animals (RENCTAS 2001), 40 per cent of the wildlife smuggling rings in Brazil, which are thought to number around 400, are suspected of trafficking drugs as well. There is then a connection to drugs within the smuggling aspect of wildlife trafficking. Connections to other crimes will be explored later.

The above list of smuggling tactics is most likely not a complete list of strategies; as the illegal wildlife trade operates in the ‘underworld’ there are undoubtedly techniques for smuggling that have yet to be uncovered. It can be seen, though, that how the smuggling takes place is largely determined by whether the wildlife is alive or dead. Live wildlife is much more difficult to smuggle and perhaps more conducive to the use of fraudulent paperwork.

As mentioned, for some of the products that are obtained from wildlife, a processing stage takes place. Processing is the alteration of the wildlife into a saleable product. This might involve grinding down rhinoceros horn to make medicine or carving ivory into a dagger or decorative item. Furs and leathers must be dried or tanned and sewn into fabrics, clothing, accessories, etc. Timber must be cut and sawn into boards. Again, this is very species dependent and it is also regionally dependent. For example, elephant tusks are taken in Africa, but will be carved in the Middle or Far East. Fur is poached in Russia and also dried and made into clothing there, so the processing place varies with the species that is being trafficked and therefore may occur before or after smuggling. Again, the language typically used here is very telling. Wildlife is ‘processed’ into ‘products’ removing their individuality and sentience and placing them as material objects on the capitalist market.

More of the intricacies of this process will be teased out as examples and explored throughout this book, but needless to say it is a complicated process with many factors at play. After being smuggled to the destination, the wildlife or wildlife product is then sold to the final buyer, who may have in fact made a specific order for a particular species, or the wildlife will be put up for sale at a market. This may be a physical location or a website online. The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) in the UK conducted a study in 2005 that found selling of illegal wildlife through the Internet to be significant. Their one week online intensive survey of websites found over 9,000 wild non-human animals and their products for sale from over 122 traders (IFAW 2005). Most of the species for sale were protected by law (IFAW 2005). Auction sites are difficult to regulate and that, coupled with the low concern over wildlife crimes, has meant that little effort has been made to police these websites (IFAW 2005). In 2007, eBay, probably the most popular online auction website, agreed not to allow international sales of products made from ivory (Greenemeier 2008), but a further investigation by IFAW (2008) found that eBay was responsible for 83 per cent of online ivory sales and 63 per cent of online wildlife trade. eBay acknowledged that in trying to allow legal domestic trade and preconvention CITES specimens, stopping the illegal portion of the trade was impossible (Greenemeier 2008). It has promised to crack down in the same way as it has tackled drugs and pornography in the past (Greenemeier 2008).

The illegal wildlife trade or wildlife trafficking is this complete process from killing and kidnapping of wildlife, through alteration into products if necessary, then smuggling within or between countries, and selling to the final buyer in person or online. It is an intricate web with many commonalities, yet incredibly diverse in its structure due to the range of species and the products made from them. This is occurring on a significant worldwide scale that is threatening the survival of numerous species around the globe.

Scale and scope

CITES, referred to above, is the international convention that governs the trade of wildlife. It was brought into force in 1975 and since then, it has tracked the amount of trade and illegal activity that has been reported to the Secretariat in Geneva from the member countries. The scope and accuracy of the information about illegality will be discussed in the next section. As of November 2011 there were 5,457 non-human animals listed in the CITES appendices – 625 Appendix I, 4,685 Appendix II and 147 Appendix III (CITES 2012a). Additionally, there were 29,525 plant species – 301 Appendix I, 29,105 Appendix II and 119 Appendix III (CITES 2012a). This means there are 34,982 species that are monitored by the convention and 926 of those are threatened with extinction. These numbers have increased with the March 2013 Convention of the Parties, although at the time of writing, CITES had not updated their website. As is evident, even though it is estimated that there are several million species on the planet of which only 15 per cent are thought to have been discovered (Sweetlove 2011), there is a significant amount of species whose survival is threatened.

The 178 member countries each create a Management Authority to oversee the permit process and a Scientific Authority to advise on the status of species that are traded. Through discussion and collaboration, species are listed within the three appendices so that each contain species facing varying levels of threat and require a different set of permits to be legally traded. Appendix I includes those species that are highly endangered and are only traded within limited circumstances, such as for breeding or scientific purposes. Again, these transactions must have an import and an export permit. Appendix II species are facing less of a threat, but are subject to quotas as to how many individuals can be traded. Export permits must accompany these trades. There is also an Appendix III, which is essentially a way to indicate that a species may be approaching the Appendix II threshold. Parties can request that specific species be placed in Appendix III because they have concern over the survival of local populations.

The non-human animals traded are mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish and invertebrates. The plants include the range of trees, shrubs, orchids, cacti, vascular and non-vascular plants. The legal trade is worth billions of dollars annually and includes millions of individual wildlife (CITES 2012b). The WWF (n.d.a) estimates a yearly total of USD 160 billion. As indicated above, a portion of this trade is live non-human animals and plants. These fill the demand by zoos, circuses and laboratories as well as for private collections, gardens and as companion animals. There are also derivatives or processed goods made from wildlife. This is incredibly diverse, ranging from food to medicine to clothing to decorative objects. CITES keeps track of 104 different forms in which wildlife is traded. This includes parts, such as baleen, bark, bones, carapaces, claws, feathers, flowers, fruit, gall bladders, genitalia, scales, shells, skins, skulls, tails, teeth and tusks. The trade also includes live non-human animals and plants, eggs and raw coral. Additionally, there are products simply labelled as derivatives and extracts. Belts, leather products (small and large), handbags, carvings, ivory carvings and pieces, trophies, garments and rugs are some of the products that could be decorative items or souvenirs. For a sense of the immensity of the trade, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) (2002) reports that 25,000–30,000 primates, 2–5 million birds, 10 million reptile skins, 7–8 million cacti and 500 million tropical fish are traded each year. This is just a glimpse of the legal trade. The full scope of both the legal and illegal trade is difficult to truly calculate, but as will be argued throughout this book, is occurring on a scale and in such a way that it must be challenged.

The dark figure of wildlife trafficking

The legal trade then is vast, encompassing hundreds of millions of individual wildlife from the entire spectrum of species diversity. Even exact figures of the legal trade are hard to quantify due to the shear scale and inconsistencies in measuring. Documentation can be by individual non-human animal or plant, by the kilogram, by the unit or by some other measure of weight. So it is nearly impossible to place an exact figure on the scale of the legal trade. This difficulty is amplified when trying to determine the amount of illegal wildlife that is traded, which is actively being kept out of the public and criminal justice realms. Thus it could be argued there is a particularly large dark figure, or unknown amount of criminal activity. Estimates of wildlife trafficking typically appear as the profits earned from the black market. The estimate converged upon by most experts is thought to be between USD 10 and USD 20 billion, which does not include fisheries or timber, so the number could be much higher (CAWT n.d.; Wyler and Sheikh 2008; McMurray 2008; Fison 2011). Such high profits means that wildlife trafficking ranks as one of the most profitable crimes in the world behind drugs and weapons (Fison 2011). Yet it remains on the fringes of both academia and policy.

The United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Wildlife Conservation Monitoring Centre hosts the CITES Trade database, which is the collection of data that has been reported back to CITES from the Parties. Illegal transactions that are found are also reported to the Secretariat and can be searched on the database. In searching for all the illegal trades from CITES’ entire history until...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of Acronyms
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Contemporary Patterns
• 3. Significance
• 4. Construction of Harm and Victimhood
• 5. Construction of Blame and Offending
• 6. The Fight Against Wildlife Trafficking
• 7. Transnational Collaborations
• 8. Reflecting on Wildlife Trafficking
• References
• Index