Hunting and Wildlife Trade
- Pet Trade Photo
- Endangered animals, like this tamarin, are taken from their forest homes and kept as pets or sold as bush meat in Ecuador.
- Julie Larsen Maher ©WCS
Wildlife trade is a critical global challenge—feeding an international appetite for exotic goods including ivory, pelts, traditional medicines, and wild meats. As the human footprint expands, so does the trade: The more access we gain into wild places, the more we exploit their resources. As WCS works to stem the unsustainable harvest of wild animals, our challenge is twofold. We must balance the subsistence and economic needs of local people with the control of a vast threat, which has driven many species to the brink of extinction, endangered ecosystems, and created new dangers to human health, spreading monkey pox, SARS, avian flu, and other deadly diseases.
Stemming the global wildlife trade also requires education and outreach on the domestic level. Through our North America Program, WCS is working with the U.S. military to develop and implement an outreach program for personnel ready to be deployed or already stationed overseas. Military personnel and affiliates posted overseas have significant buying power that influences local markets in the communities and regions where they are based, including the ability to drive the demand for wildlife products. These can include products derived from endangered species. Trade in wildlife products poses a major threat to wildlife populations.
WCS Projects
As the eyes and ears for conservationists, ecoguards work not only to protect national parks and surrounding lands, but also to help evaluate the success of international conservation efforts.
WCS’s Wildlife Crimes Unit helps intercept the trade in illegal tiger parts on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. The island’s populations of tigers and other endangered species are under siege by poachers who sell the animals into complex trade chains. These chains often terminate in illegal markets in China and other parts of East Asia.
To help Cameroon stem the dangerous trade in bushmeat from forests to lucrative urban markets, WCS partners with the country’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry and the CAMRAIL national train network—in the past, a common means of transporting large volumes of wildlife.
Despite having survived since the late Triassic Era, many turtle species will go extinct in the next decade unless drastic conservation measures are taken. WCS is working to guard their future by addressing one of their primary threats: persecution by wildlife traders and consumers for food, the pet trade, and traditional medicine.
As part of our efforts to combat the illegal wildlife trade, WCS is working with the U.S. military to develop and implement an outreach program to discourage the purchase of wildlife souvenirs by personnel stationed overseas.
WCS works with the CIB logging company to reduce the pressures on gorillas, elephants, and other endangered wildlife in four timber concessions and to control the trade in bushmeat. This collaborative project is called PROGEPP: the Project for Ecosystem Management in the Nouabalé-Ndoki Periphery Area.
From the Newsroom
Indonesian authorities arrest a bird smuggler traveling through the island of Sumatra by bus, saving more than 20 rare birds—including the palm cockatoo—from becoming victims of the illegal wildlife trade.
A new video narrated by Edward Norton aims to combat the illegal wildlife trade in Iraq and Afghanistan by informing U.S. military personnel about the consequences of buying wildlife products while stationed overseas.
This investigative piece from CNN focuses on the growing and illegal commercial trade of bushmeat in Cameroon, and features a WCS conservationist who is working to help the country combat it.
The Republic of Congo sends a Chinese ivory smuggler to jail, an example of the tough
law enforcement that WCS recommends for combating the illegal wildlife trade.
As organized crime steps up its game in wildlife trade, a WCS conservationist suggests fighting back through increased law enforcement and better use of resources.
Why are North America’s smallest turtles getting sick? By giving full health check-ups to the rare reptiles, WCS and partners aim to clear the fog hanging over bog turtles. It's a much-needed rescue mission for a species now considered endangered in New York and Massachusetts.
WCS’s Wildlife Crime Teams commemorate the anniversary of the death of Vietnam’s last rhino with raids on restaurants and shops in the city of Da Lat, where civets, mouse deer, pangolin, and other rare species continue to be served to diners and sold as souvenirs.
A team of conservationists has released three adult cheetahs, rescued from the hands of an illegal wildlife trader, into Tarangire National Park in Tanzania.
A growing online black market is creating new demand for items like elephant ivory chopsticks, tiger claws and whiskers, and wallets made from clouded leopard skin. WCS’s Wildlife Crime Unit is working with Indonesian authorities to investigate the illegal Internet trade.
The International Primatological Society grants their 2010 Charles Southwick Award to WCS's Joseph Mulema for his work to protect Cross River gorillas in Cameroon.
At our country's doorstep, WCS health experts are helping authorities investigate the smuggling of wildlife and its stowaway diseases.
Rampant poaching and a growing pet trade direct Madagascar's beautiful radiated tortoises toward extinction.
WCS finds Vietnam’s commercial wildlife farms are hurting, not helping wildlife. A new report says the farms are a detriment to conservation efforts and enforcement.
During an aerial survey to assess levels of poaching in Chad’s wet season, WCS conservationist Mike Fay found that elephants who went in search of forage outside Zakouma National Park paid the exit fee with their lives.