Why so much illegal wildlife trade gets through US Customs

[DavidBrown]

There are only as many wildlife law enforcement officers inspecting incoming cargo for illegal wildlife products like ivory, rhino horns, etc. as there were 30 years ago. In that time period the illegal wildlife trade has swelled into a multi-billion dollar criminal enterprise on the scale of the drug and illegal weapons trades.

Overwhelmed U.S. port inspectors unable to keep up with illegal wildlife trade - The Washington Post

 

[Hix]

And I imagine the majority of them aren't trained in wildlife.



Hix

 

[dean]

The more I read items such as this the more I despair for the natural world, if it isn't hunted for bush meat, and trophies it is killed for it's environment, as man needs land for his own food. The human population is out of control and the creatures that share our planet seam to be doomed. And still Anml R groups want to close animal collections, and send the animals - I assume- back to the 'wild'.

 

[Hix]

And still Anml R groups want to close animal collections, and send the animals - I assume- back to the 'wild'.

Apparently, if it dies in the wild it's OK, because it died a 'free' animal. Which is preferable to life in captivity.



Hix

 

[Buldeo]

Good article.

Richard Conniff had a piece on his Strange Behaviors blog recently about a pair of mobile phone applications designed to help cops spot illegal animals and animal parts. Apparently the United States' fighting personnel are eager to participate in the illegal wildlife trade.

...in Afghanistan, where merchants coming onto military bases for weekly or monthly bazaars routinely sold fur coats from Eurasian lynx, skulls and horns of Marco Polo sheep, and even snow leopard pelts. Soldiers, contractors, and international aid workers also frequented the wildlife market known as “Chicken Street” in Kabul. Sweeps of bases by military police turned up hundreds of contraband wildlife products, and a survey back at Fort Drum found that 40 percent of soldiers had either purchased or seen other soldiers purchase wildlife products while abroad.

To help fix the problem, Kretser has produced a smartphone app called Wildlife Alert that gives law enforcement officers a mobile decision tree for figuring out whether or not a wildlife product from Afghanistan is legal. Writing in the journal Biological Conservation, Kretser and her WCS coauthors also announced the development of a similar app, called Wildlife Guardian, already being tried out by forest police and customs officers to address rampant illegal wildlife trafficking in China.

Full post here.

 

[Hix]

And I imagine the majority of them aren't trained in wildlife.

I made the above statement last week, when I was in Africa. Due to dodgy wifi I wasn't able to download the article at the time.

Having just read it now I can see my assumption was wrong - the teams involved are obviously well-trained. I wasn't aware the article was about teams that specifically look for illegal wildlife shipments.

As such, I retract my above statement as it is clearly incorrect in this case.



Hix