Illegal trade

The main purpose of this wildlife crime assessment is to provide information on the current trends and drivers of wildlife crime in Ethiopia, get insights into existing local criminal networks, evaluate how the country serves as a transit route for the contraband and, assess the strengths and weaknesses of the legal framework to effectively address wildlife crime.

Indonesia is home to one species of pangolin, the Sunda Pangolin Manis javanica, which can be found from Sumatra, Java and adjacent islands to Kalimantan. While little is known about the population of pangolins in Indonesia, it is likely that current trade and hunting levels are unsustainable. There is evidence of professional and industrial-scale hunting for the purposes of commercial international trade.

Pangolins are currently the most heavily trafficked wild mammals in the world. In this report, the illegal pangolin trade from 2010–2015 was investigated, focusing on the global trade routes used to traffic pangolins and their derivatives.

Central Africa has been identified as one of the main sources of illegal ivory fueling unregulated domestic ivory trade throughout West and Central Africa and overseas destinations, especially Asia, in recent years. This report presents the results of field surveys of ivory markets carried out in 11 cities of five Central African countries in 2007, 2009, 2014 and 2015 by two different researchers, one in 2007 and 2009, and another in 2014 and 2015, using the same methodology.

Malaysia is the world’s paramount illicit ivory transit country. To better understand this trade dynamic, TRAFFIC assessed information from ivory seizures -- made either by Malaysian authorities, or outside the country but with Malaysia identified as part of the trade chain -- from a period of over 11 years (from January 2003 to May 2014).

This report illustrates the large scale of the bird trade documented through a complete inventory of five major markets in eastern and central Java (Bratang, Kupang, Turi (Surabaya); Malang and Yogyakarta) and follows on from a similar inventory carried out in Jakarta in 2014, which documented a total of 19,036 birds.

The rapid growth and widespread use of social media has allowed these new platforms to facilitate wildlife trade, both legal and illegal. With this in mind, TRAFFIC undertook a rapid assessment to monitor wildlife trade occurring on 14 Facebook groups in Peninsular Malaysia, conducted over approximately 50 hours during a five month period (November 2014 – March 2015).