Wildlife Crime
Illegal wildlife trade (IWT) is a multi-billion-dollar industry that is decimating countless species around the globe, and extracting a heavy toll on the rangers, law enforcement officers, prosecutors, judges, and other dedicated conservationists putting their lives on the line to protect our world’s most imperiled species. IWT is estimated to bring in $23 billion annually for international criminal networks and terrorist organizations, and the historically light sentences faced by poachers make wildlife trafficking a low risk-high reward crime for the perpetrators. This booming trade is devastating some of the world’s most beloved and iconic species, including Africa’s elephants and rhinos.
EIA has an extensive history of exposing illegal trade in endangered species products, including elephant ivory, rhino horn, tiger bone and skins, bear gall bladders, whale, dolphin and porpoise products, turtle shell, large scale trade in live caught wild birds and parrots, and destruction or degrading of their terrestrial or marine habitats. EIA’s strategies rely on detailed investigations to document illegal trade in wildlife and their products, and EIA uses that evidence to advocate for international and domestic precautionary policies and solutions to increase protections for threatened and endangered species.