Tourism is on the frontline of confronting wildlife crime

Wildlife-based tourism is a growing sector across all regions that generates jobs, including in areas remote from capitals. Tourism operators have the capacity to conserve wildlife, realise a commercial return and generate prosperity for local people in a manner that is mutually beneficial and self-sustaining. 

Yet the very assets that underpin this wildlife-based tourism – the wildlife itself – are under severe threat. The threats come from a multitude of sources: habitat loss, pollution, infrastructure, climate change, over-exploitation and wildlife trafficking, which continues to pose an immediate threat to wildlife. If we lose the wildlife, we lose the wildlife-based tourism and the environmental, economic and social benefits that goes with it.

Tourism operators are in the front line of this fight against wildlife trafficking for reasons I will explain – but I first need to set out the scale, nature and impacts of these destructive crimes.

Scale, nature and impacts of wildlife trafficking

Scale – if you include all wildlife, all animals, plants and fungi – wildlife trafficking is worth $200B annually. UN Reports over the past decade show that between four to seven thousand species from across every region being trafficked – from well know animals like elephants for their ivory, to high value trees like rosewood for its timber, to succulents such as cacti, to sharks for their fins, and insects such as ants and spiders for a variety of uses. 

Trafficked species include those protected under international law, most particularly under the wildlife trade convention known by its acronym CITES, as well as many tens of thousands of species that are not protected at international law, especially plants and marine species. 

Demand is widespread. Trafficked species are used for food, medicine, mass markets and specialised markets for pets and ornamental plants, furniture, and as items for display. The nature of each illicit market and the source and destination states can vary from species to species. 

Nature – we are not here talking of localised subsistence poaching – we are talking of the involvement of transnational organised groups that traffic wildlife at an industrial scale – UN Reports found 13 million wildlife items seized weighing over 16,000 tonnes over just seven years. 370 metric tons of pangolin scales were seized over 10 years. 1.6 million illegally harvested succulents were seized over 5 years in just one country. 

These crimes also converge with many other crimes, such as corruption, illicit financial flows, and money laundering.

Impacts – the impacts are estimated at between $1-2trillion annually. This is due to its impact on ecosystems. When you remove wild animals, plants and fungi from an ecosystem you degrade it and its ability to provide the services it one did.  This impacts the ecosystems’ ability to sequester carbon, provide fresh water, its value for tourism, and the generation of government revenue.

This figure doesn’t include the risk wildlife trafficking poses to animal and human health, especially the trafficking of wild animals that carry pathogens that can spillover from animals to people. Trafficked animals go through no biosecurity checks, which poses a serious risk of pathogen spillover and the outbreak of zoonotic epidemics and pandemics.  Epidemics pandemics pose a particular risk to the tourism sector as we saw during COVID19. 

International cooperation and gaps in the system

Preventing and combatting wildlife trafficking demands high levels of international cooperation – from source, transit and destination countries. Progress has been made over the past decades, but it is no where near enough and efforts to date have not seen us turn the corner. 

And despite the industrial scale, organised and transnational nature, and severe impacts of wildlife trafficking, at the international level there is:

• no agreed definition of wildlife trafficking, including what conduct should be criminalised, 
• no legally binding agreement on preventing and combating wildlife trafficking, and 
• no global centre of gravity for advancing cooperative efforts to combat and prevent wildlife crime, or for reviewing the progress being made.  

We have been advocating through the Global Initiative to End Wildlife Crime for a new global agreement to prevent and combat wildlife trafficking to fill these gaps. We have helped generate support from many States and now an Intergovernmental process is underway to assess the possibility, feasibility and merits of a new agreement.  

Importance of tackling demand 

Amongst other things, a new agreement would address demand. Demand comes from distant shores. It is extremely hard to protect wildlife at source if there is a strong demand and a high price for being paid for illicitly acquired wildlife. Insufficient attention has been given to demand, yet it is essential to do so. 

One of the biggest recent challenges we have faced has turned out to be our greatest sucess – and that is the trafficking of African elephant ivory. Over 100,000 elephants were killed over a three-year period for ivory (2010-2012). Demand was extremely high, and the price climbed to $2,800 a kilogram. 

It is very hard to stop poaching when demand is high and price paid for the contraband is high. It was through a collective effort, working right across the illegal supply chain – including closure of domestic ivory markets – that we overcame the crisis. The price of elephant ivory fell to $600 a kilogram and elephant poaching and ivory smuggling is way down from its historic highs. 

One thing we are doing to tackle demand is to encourage States to make it a criminal offence to import any wildlife or wildlife product into a country if it has been acquired in contravention of the national laws of the source country. By way of example, that means if you stole a succulent plant in South Africa and managed to get it out undetected, you could not bring it into Switzerland unless you could prove it was legally acquired under South African law. If not, it would be a criminal offence under Swiss law to try and import it. By putting more pressure on at the demand end, it will help relieve pressure at the source. 

Importance of the tourism sector 

Now turning back to the tourism sector. 

Once wildlife is poached, wildlife is almost always lost to the wild – because its dead or cannot be returned to the wild due to risk of spreading disease. Prevention is better than cure, but both prevention and enforcement are required.  

We need viable land use options that support wildlife at source, and wildlife-based tourism is an essential part of the mix in ensuring the survival of wildlife and in fighting wildlife crime. We have seen this across multiple countries and continents. In this regard, it’s inspiring to see the 4 C’s that underpin the Long Run, namely ‘Conservation, Community, Culture, and Commerce’. We have also seen the World Travel and Tourism take action in this space. 

The tourism sector is not a fringe player in the fight against wildlife trafficking – it is right at the centre of it. Tourism operators are on the front line of this fight along with the customs and rangers and inspectors.

How operators engage with staff, customers and local communities, and where they choose to invest, can change the trajectory of the survival of our wildlife. By doing the right thing tourism operators are investing in maintaining the core natural asset that underpins wildlife tourism.

What the tourism sector can do

There are many things the tourism sector can do, including to:

• Actively promote responsible wildlife-based tourism – including to discourage inappropriate interaction with wildlife, including photographs shared via social media;
• Raise awareness amongst customers of wildlife trafficking and how they can assist in the fight, including by not buying illegal or unsustainably sourced wildlife products;
• Engage staff and deploy technology to actively monitor and protect wildlife assets – and avoid publicly sharing the location of rare wildlife;
• Educate staff about wildlife trafficking. Let them be the eyes and ears of the police and empower them to report any illegal or suspicious activities and to share information with enforcement authorities;
• Invest locally and generate local jobs and prosperity; and
• Support the Global Initiative to End Wildlife Crime in calling for a new global agreement on wildlife trafficking. The Initiative now has over 50 supporting organisations, including the Long Run and the World Travel and Tourism Council as International Champions.

There’s also an App called Wildlife Witness that can be used by tourism staff and customers to report suspicious actively, and you can also report to local authorities. 

I hope that this gives a sense of scale, nature and impacts of wildlife trafficking, and what actions the tourism sector can take to help protect our precious wildlife assets. 

This article is based upon my remarks to an open event recently hosted by The Long Run with the Wildlife Justice Commission and the Global Initiative to End Wildlife Crime to raise awareness of the scourge of wildlife trafficking and to explore how we can better tackle these crimes together with the tourism sector.

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