Cisneros and her team scoured through media reports, published between January 2017 and December 2022, on wildlife seizures and poaching incidents in Hispanic America. From each media report, the researchers extracted the date of the incident, its country and location, the number of individual animals involved, the geographic origin of the animals, their taxonomic classifications and the transit mode and destination. They also looked at entries in the Law Enforcement Management Information System (LEMIS), a U.S. wildlife trade database, to identify key ports of entry of illegal wildlife shipped from Hispanic America.<\/p>\n
The report identified 1,945 seizure and poaching incidents involving 102,577 reptiles, birds, mammals and amphibians belonging to at least 690 species. More than half of the species (363) were only protected by domestic laws and lacked protection under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Of those, 40 were endangered and 13 critically endangered, according to the IUCN Red List.<\/p>\n
\u201cWildlife trafficking in Hispanic America hasn\u2019t really gotten the same level of coverage and attention as wildlife trafficking in Africa, which is likely driven by Africa having more iconic species being trafficked,\u201d says Faith Hornor, program director of wildlife crimes at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS), a U.S.-based nonprofit tracking transnational organized crime networks. \u201cBut that doesn\u2019t mean that wildlife crime in Latin America doesn\u2019t exist \u2014 in fact, the numbers are quite alarming.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Eye-opening\u2019 trends in illegal wildlife trafficking<\/h2>\n
More than half of the wildlife seized were reptiles (59%); the numbers are explained by two major seizure incidents from Mexico in 2020, involving nearly 30,000 mud turtles (genus Kinosternon) and musk turtles (genus Sternotherus). Reptiles are trafficked to supply the domestic and international pet trade; for their skin, meat or eggs; for taxidermy; and for use in traditional medicine.<\/p>\n
Freshwater turtles and tortoises were the most seized reptiles, with mud turtles, mata mata turtles (style=\u201dfont-weight: 400;\u201d>Chelus fimbriata), Chaco tortoises (Chelonoidis chilensis) and Gal\u00e1pagos tortoises (C. niger) topping the list. In some cases, reptile eggs were smuggled to be hatched, and the hatchlings falsely sold as captive-bred individuals. Among lizards, the green iguana, an exotic pet that has become a nuisance in some parts of the world, was the most seized.<\/p>\n Birds, which represented more than a quarter (28%) of the animals seized, topped the list of seizures in most countries. Psittacids (holotropical parrots) and songbirds, trafficked for the pet trade, topped the list. Mammals, representing 4% of all seized animals, were mainly traded for bushmeat and included deer, rodents such as lowland pacas (Cuniculus paca) and capybaras (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris), tapirs, armadillos and sloths.<\/p>\n Primates prominently featured on the list of seized mammals, with eight species listed on CITES Appendix I, which prohibits commercial trade in these species. These included the Yucat\u00e1n howler monkey (Alouatta pigra), the Central American squirrel monkey (Saimiri oerstedii) and three species of tamarins (genus Saguinus).<\/p>\n Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Peru and Bolivia were the top five countries with the most reported seizures and poaching incidents, with Mexico alone responsible for more than a quarter of them. In the case of Mexico, Cisneros attributes these high numbers to the country\u2019s higher capacity to monitor the trade and journalists to report on it. Most animals were smuggled by road, stuffed in tiny bags and suitcases and loaded onto passenger buses to escape being caught.<\/p>\n What struck Cisneros most, she says, was that nearly 92.5% of the seizures in Hispanic America were live animals, indicating they were destined for the pet trade. \u201cThat\u2019s obviously eye-opening,\u201d she says. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of deaths of animals due to the lack of care and the stress of trafficking. \u2026 It poses a really big threat of spreading zoonotic diseases, and nobody wants another pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n Unlike wildlife from Africa and Southeast Asia, which are trafficked across continents, a sizable proportion of wildlife trafficked in Hispanic America catered to domestic demand, spurred by the age-old practice of having wild pets in the region. Only a fraction (2.6%) of all seizures were destined for or seized in the U.S., Europe and Asia and mostly involved rare or endemic species. Data from LEMIS showed that El Paso, Nogales and Dallas\/Fort Worth, all of them in U.S. states that share a border with Mexico, received the most illicit shipments of wildlife.<\/p>\n \u201cI always thought of Latin America as a source region, but actually, we\u2019re also a demand region,\u201d Cisneros says. \u201cThis is an international problem, but it\u2019s also a local and regional problem.\u201d<\/p>\n The broad trends indicated in IFAW\u2019s report coincide with the findings of a 2021 report published by C4ADS that looked at illegal wildlife trafficking through air transit across Latin America and the Caribbean between 2010 and 2020. The report also looked at media coverage of seizures at airports and found that trafficking networks in the region were tied to 53 countries, with live animals accounting for 40% of seizures. Mexico, Brazil and Colombia topped the list of countries with the most seizures, and a big portion of trafficked wildlife was destined for the pet trade.<\/p>\n The analyses of both reports, which rely on publicly available data, \u201conly represents successful intervention efforts or failed trafficking events that were also reported [in the media] and were picked up by the analysts doing the research,\u201d Hornor says. \u201cSo it\u2019s really just a small portion of the scale of trafficking that\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/p>\n This \u201ctip of the iceberg\u201d data, as Cisneros calls the report\u2019s findings, is already alarming for countries to act together and stop crimes against wildlife that push vulnerable species toward extinction and cause greater ecological damage such as increased risks of zoonotic diseases and loss of ecological functions such as seed dispersal.<\/p>\n According to Ciscneros, major hurdles to tackling wildlife crime include the lack of enforcement of existing laws due to a lack of resources and rampant corruption, followed by inconsistent penalties, legal loopholes and weak cross-border cooperation. \u201cIt goes back to wildlife trafficking being a low priority in comparison to other types of crimes,\u201d she says. \u201cUnfortunately for animals, this region has a long way to go when it comes to harmonizing their policies and having resources to fight this crime.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the perfect storm,\u201d Hornor says. \u201cHaving corrupt actors that are willing to move products, or having systems that aren\u2019t properly staffed for someone to be able to process all of this, and that also creates an exciting opportunity for criminal actors to move products successfully.\u201d<\/p>\n The IFAW urges countries in Hispanic America to adopt the commitments of the 2019 Lima Declaration on illegal wildlife trade, such as strengthening domestic laws that address wildlife crime, strengthening criminal justice responses, raising awareness and eradicating consumer demand for wildlife. It also urges countries to improve their monitoring and investigations of wildlife crime, increasing surveillance for zoonotic diseases and building facilities for rescue and rehabilitation of seized wildlife.<\/p>\n Wildlife trafficking is currently a high-profit, low-risk business. One way to create a big blow to traffickers, Hornor says, is to up the risks for them and reduce their profits. \u201cIf you make the costs high, whether that\u2019s the actual cost to traffic, paying someone off becomes higher or harder, or the risk of getting caught or the jail time going up, the benefit of whatever they\u2019re receiving back in terms of profit is not going to be worth it at some point.<\/p>\n \u201cIt takes demand reduction, supply protection and investigations together to solve this issue, and that continued pressure across the supply chain to prevent a catastrophic event,\u201d Hornor says.<\/p>\nSpecies need stronger law enforcement and monitoring<\/h2>\n