Wildlife Smuggling Campaigns
Our team closed 2 wildlife smuggling rings in Asia – One was trafficking critically endangered pangolin to China, while the second was smuggling endangered forest turtles. Our recent campaign in the Amazon has seen us targeting the illegal pet trade. It is possible to buy almost any wild Amazonian animal as a pet, including monkeys, snakes, puma etc. Our team will be returning to the Amazon soon to continue this campaign, and our goal will be to close down more illegal wildlife smuggling operations. Below are a selection of videos from these and other successful missions. There are also playlists with both our Wildlife smuggling videos, as well as Amazon campaign videos. You can support such work by making a donation here.
We had a warehouse suspected of trading endangered wildlife under surveillance, and finally managed to get the evidence for a search warrant. Video above was taken of us executing the search warrant and searching the premises.
We had successfully raided a wildlife smuggling operation, and while most of the animals were already dead, we did manage to find this one pangolin still alive. Here we release him back into the wild.
We knew a vessel suspected of trafficking wildlife, but lacked the resource to tail them indefinitely. We decided instead to track them by covertly placing a satellite GPS tracker on the vessel’s masthead. Video above was from this mission, which did eventually lead to a successful outcome.
In the recent Amazon campaign, we were trying to figure out how the wildlife was getting smuggled from the remote jungles to the cities where traffickers are based. We ran surveillance on a river intersection where trading boats would often stop. In the video above, we didn’t have to wait long.
After running surveillance on four warehouses, all suspected of trading in wildlife, the trail led back to an operation in the country where we believed wildlife was being sourced. In this video we execute a search warrant and arrest several men involved in trafficking turtles.
We often cover where smuggled animals ends up. In this video, our Biologist travels to Vietnam where a lot of endangered wildlife is used in Chinese medicines. In this case she is researching why pangolin is in such high demand.
We started our Amazon campaign focusing on the Pink Dolphin. In the video above, you see when it takes a dramatic turn. We stumble onto a poacher who had just shot and killed an endangered monkey. That was bad enough – What made it horrid however was he had also caught the monkey’s baby, and was selling it as a pet. From there, we followed the illegal pet trade all the way to Macapa in Brazil – a 2 month journey of over 3000km. We are returning to the Amazon later this year to complete the campaign, and we are confident it will lead to a number of arrests and prosecutions. If you would like to contribute to this then please donate to the campaign or join our tribe.
