IV. Poaching, Wildlife Trafficking and Organised Crime

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Notes

1 Christian Nellemann et al. (eds), The Environmental Crime Crisis – Threats to Sustainable Development from Illegal Exploitation and Trade in Wildlife and Forest Resources (Nairobi and Arendal: UN Environment Programme and GRID-Arendal, 2014), p. 13. However, see the Introduction to this Whitehall Paper for difficulties with such calculations.

2 See, for example, European Commission, ‘Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions: EU Action Plan against Wildlife Trafficking’, 26 February 2016, <http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=COM:2016:87:FIN&from=EN>, accessed 1 October 2016.

3 See the Introduction to this Whitehall Paper for a more detailed discussion on quantifying declines in elephant populations as a result of the current poaching crisis.

4 Andrew M Lemieux and Ronald V Clarke, ‘The International Ban on Ivory Sales and its Effects on Elephant Poaching in Africa’, British Journal of Criminology (Vol. 49, No. 4, 2009), pp. 451–71.

5 Barack Obama, ‘Executive Order – Combating Wildlife Trafficking', White House, 1 July 2013.

6 National Security Council, ‘Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime’, 25 July 2011, <https://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/nsc/transnational-crime>, accessed 3 June 2016.

7 See, for example, the UK government’s Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund, administered jointly by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department for International Development.

8 Marina Ratchford et al., Criminal Nature: The Global Security Implications of the Illegal Wildlife Trade (Yarmouth Port, MA: International Fund for Animal Welfare, 2013); Christian Nellemann et al. (eds), Elephants in the Dust: The African Elephant Crisis (Arendal: GRID-Arendal, 2013); Nellemann et al. (eds), The Environmental Crime Crisis.

9 See CITES, ‘ICCWC's Approach’, <https://cites.org/prog/iccwc.php/Strategy>, accessed 6 August 2016.

10 See UNODC, ‘UNODC Legal Mandates for Wildlife and Forest Crime’, <https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/wildlife-and-forest-crime/mandates.html>, accessed 1 August 2016.

11 UN, ‘Draft Doha Declaration on Integrating Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice into the Wider United Nations Agenda to Address Social and Economic Challenges and to Promote the Rule of Law at the National and International Levels, and Public Participation’, Paragraph 9(e), 31 March 2015.

12 UN General Assembly, ‘Resolution Adopted by the General Assembly on 30 July 2015’, A/RES/69/314, 19 August 2015.

13 Ibid.

14 UNODC, ‘Organized Crime Threat to Wild Species on the Increase, Says UN on Wildlife Day’, press release, 3 March 2015.

15 Lemieux and Clarke, ‘The International Ban on Ivory Sales and its Effects on Elephant Poaching in Africa’.

16 International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species 2016, ‘Raphus cucullatus’, <http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/22690059/0>, accessed 1 September 2016.

17 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2015, ‘Pinguinus impennis’, <http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/22694856/0>, accessed 1 September 2016.

18 J W Duckworth et al., ‘Rucervus schomburgki, Schomburgk's Deer’, IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2015, <http://www.iucnredlist.org/pdflink.79818502>, accessed 3 June 2016.

19 TRAFFIC, ‘Wildlife Trade’, <http://www.traffic.org/trade/>, accessed 3 June 2016.

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid.

22 Julian Rademeyer, Killing for Profit: Exposing the Illegal Rhino Horn Trade (Cape Town: Zebra Press, 2012), p. 296.

23 Ibid., pp. 154–88, 288–99.

24 Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), ‘Untouchable? Wildlife Crime Kingpin Vixay Keosavang’, 14 February 2014; Rademeyer, Killing for Profit, pp. 294–95; David Connett, ‘$1m Bounty on the “Pablo Escobar” of Animal Trafficking's Head’, The Independent, 18 January 2014.

25 US State Department, ‘Transnational Organized Crime Rewards Program: Xaysavang Network’, <https://www.state.gov/j/inl/tocrewards/c60273.htm>, accessed 4 August 2016; EIA, ‘Untouchable?’.

26 Melanie Wellsmith, ‘Wildlife Crime: The Problems of Enforcement’, European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research (Vol. 17, No. 2, June 2011).

27 Peter Knights et al., ‘The Illusion of Control: Hong Kong's “Legal” Ivory Trade’, WildAid, 23 October 2015.

28 Cheryl Lo and Gavin Edwards, ‘The Hard Truth: How Hong Kong's Ivory Trade is Fuelling Africa's Elephant Poaching Crisis’, WWF-Hong Kong, 2015, p. 11.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid.

31 Knights et al., ‘The Illusion of Control’.

32 Rademeyer, Killing for Profit.

33 INTERPOL estimates that only around 10 per cent of illicit commodities are interdicted – an estimate widely applied to the ivory trade by NGOs, journalists and analysts.

34 CITES, ‘Elephant Poaching and Ivory Smuggling Figures Released Today’, press release, 13 June 2014.

35 CITES, ‘Sixty-Fifth Meeting of the Standing Committee, Geneva (Switzerland), 7–11 July 2014: Elephant Conservation, Illegal Killing and Ivory Trade’, secretariat report, SC65 Doc. 42.1, CITES CoP16, 2013, p. 28.

36 According to 2014 ETIS data. See Tom Milliken, Illegal Trade in Ivory and Rhino Horn: An Assessment to Improve Law Enforcement Under the Wildlife TRAPS Project (Cambridge: TRAFFIC International and USAID, 2014), pp. 5–6. For more information on the Elephant Trade Information System, see CITES, ‘The Elephant Trade Information System (ETIS)’, <https://cites.org/eng/prog/etis/index.php>, accessed 4 October 2016.

37 Samuel K Wasser et al., ‘Genetic Assignment of Large Seizures of Elephant Ivory Reveals Africa's Major Poaching Hotspots’, Science (Vol. 349, No. 6243, 2015), p. 85.

38 Peter Gastrow, ‘Triad Societies and Chinese Organised Crime in South Africa’, Institute for Security Studies, Occasional Paper No. 48, 2001.

39 International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), ‘The Disturbing War for Abalone’, National Geographic, 8 December 2014.

40 Sam Kiley, ‘Rare Shellfish Bartered for Drugs’, The Guardian, 23 September 2007.

41 IUCN, ‘The Disturbing War for Abalone’.

42 The Economist, ‘Big Game Poachers’, 8 November 2014.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid.; EIA, ‘Vanishing Point: Criminality, Corruption and the Devastation of Tanzania's Elephants’, November 2014.

45 UNODC, ‘United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the Protocols Thereto’, 2004.

46 Ibid.

47 Human–wildlife conflict generally refers to interactions between wildlife and humans that result in negative human outcomes, such as loss of human life or property. For further discussion on this topic see, for example, Francine Madden, ‘Creating Coexistence between Humans and Wildlife: Global Perspectives on Local Efforts to Address Human–Wildlife Conflict,’ Human Dimensions of Wildlife (Vol. 9, 2004).

48 Philip Muyanga, ‘KRA Officer among Six Charged over Sh576m Thai Ivory Haul’, Business Daily, 23 June 2015.

49 The Star, ‘Moi Firm Siginon Linked to Sh570 Million Singapore Ivory Haul, Company Says it Loaded Tea Not Trophies’, 21 May 2015.

50 The Guardian, ‘Ton of Ivory Missing from Ugandan Government Vault’, 17 November 2014; Ronald Musoke, ‘Uganda: Missing Ivory – Mutagamba Suspends UWA's Executive Director’, The Independent (Kampala), 25 November 2014.

51 Oxpeckers, ‘Official Complicity in Mozambican Elephant Slaughter’, 26 September 2014.

52 Ibid.

53 EIA, ‘Vanishing Point’, p. 13.

54 Rhishja Cota-Larson, ‘Tanzania: Wildlife Officials Fired for Animal Trafficking’, Annamiticus, 15 August 2012.

55 Tanya Wyatt and Anh Ngoc Cao, ‘Corruption and Wildlife Trafficking’, U4 Issue (No. 11, May 2015).

56 Ibid. for a typology of corruption in wildlife trafficking, pp. 7–10, 13–14, 31–34; Tom Milliken and Jo Shaw, The South Africa—Viet Nam Rhino Horn Trade Nexus: A Deadly Combination of Institutional Lapses, Corrupt Wildlife Industry Professionals and Asian Crime Syndicates (Johannesburg: TRAFFIC, 2012); Maira Martini, ‘Wildlife Crime and Corruption’, U4 Expert Answer No. 367, 15 February 2013; Marceil Yeater, ‘Corruption and Illegal Wildlife Trafficking’, in UNODC, ‘Corruption, Environment and the United Nations Convention Against Corruption’, February 2012.

57 Caiphas Chimhete, ‘Bigwigs Fingered in Hwange Elephant Poisoning’, The Standard, 20 October 2013.

58 Peter Gastrow, ‘Termites at Work: Transnational Organized Crime and State Erosion in Kenya’, International Peace Institute, September 2011.

59 Peter B Martin, ‘Confronting Transnational Organized Crime’, in Emilio Viano (ed.), Global Organized Crime and International Security (Aldershot: Ashgate 1999), quoted in ibid., p. 2.

60 Gastrow, ‘Termites at Work’, p. 1.

61 UNODC, ‘Crime and Instability: Case Studies of Transnational Threats’, February 2010, p. 2.

62 UNODC, ‘Organized Crime Has Globalized and Turned into a Security Threat’, press release, 17 June 2010.

63 Gastrow, ‘Termites at Work’, p. 8.

64 Ibid; UNODC, ‘The Globalization of Crime: A Transnational Organized Crime Threat Assessment’, 2010.

65 Nellemann et al. (eds), The Environmental Crime Crisis, p. 19.

66 Tom Maguire and Cathy Haenlein, ‘An Illusion of Complicity: Terrorism and the Illegal Ivory Trade in East Africa’, RUSI Occasional Papers, 21 September 2015. The assumption that these knowledge gaps can apply across other areas and species is based on the lack of any studies or analytic literature that explicitly contradict these findings for illicit trafficking of wildlife in other areas or in relation to other species.

67 AFP, ‘Powerful Few Control Ivory Trafficking in Africa: Study’, 15 February 2016.

68 Ibid.; see also the case studies in Lorraine Elliott and William H Schaedla (eds), Handbook of Transnational Environmental Crime (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2016); Varun Vira et al., ‘Out of Africa: Mapping the Global Trade in Illicit Elephant Ivory’, Born Free USA/C4ADS, August 2014.

69 AFP, ‘Powerful Few Control Ivory Trafficking in Africa’.

70 Ibid.

71 See, for example, Vira et al., ‘Out of Africa’.

72 Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), ‘Ivory Trafficking from Southern Tanzania: A Carcass-to-Port Study’, confidential final report to the Elephant Crisis Fund, 2016.

73 Ibid.

74 Vira et al., ‘Out of Africa’.

75 Ibid.

76 Ibid.; US Drug Enforcement Administration, ‘2015 National Drug Threat Assessment Summary’, 2015, <http://www.dea.gov/docs/2015%20NDTA%20Report.pdf>, accessed 3 June 2016.

77 These individuals have been labelled ‘ivory kingpins’ by politicians, NGOs, analysts and journalists. See Willis Oketch and Joackim Bwana, ‘Ivory Trafficking Kingpin Feisal Mohammed Jailed for 20 Years, Fined Sh20 Million’, Standard Digital, 23 July 2016; David Smith, ‘Chinese “Ivory Queen” Charged with Smuggling 706 Elephant Tusks’, The Guardian, 8 October 2015; Weldon Kemboi, ‘Police Arrest Mombasa Tycoon and His Two Sons over Ivory Seized in Singapore’, BarakaFM, 4 June 2015.

78 Samuel K Wasser et al., ‘Combating the Illegal Trade in African Elephant Ivory with DNA Forensics’, Conservation Biology (Vol. 22, No. 4, 2008), pp. 1065–71.

79 George Wittemyer et al., ‘Illegal Killing for Ivory Drives Global Decline in African Elephants’, PNAS (Vol. 111, No. 36, 2014).

80 Karl Mathiesen, ‘Tanzania Elephant Population Declined by 60% in Five Years, Census Reveals’, The Guardian, 2 June 2015.

81 Wellsmith, ‘Wildlife Crime’.

82 Mongabay, ‘Abalone Poaching Drives Meth Drug Trade in South Africa’, 20 May 2007.

83 WCS, ‘Ivory Trafficking from Southern Tanzania’.

84 Vanda Felbab-Brown, ‘Despite its Siren Song, High-Value Targeting Doesn’t Fit All: Matching Interdiction Patterns to Specific Narcoterrorism and Organized-Crime Contexts’, paper delivered at the Counter Narco-Terrorism and Drug Interdiction Conference, Miami, Florida, 16–19 September 2013.

85 For further discussion of effective strategies for targeting criminal networks, see Paul A C Duijn et al., ‘The Relative Ineffectiveness of Criminal Network Disruption’, Scientific Reports (No. 4, February 2014).

86 The Citizen, ‘Special Report: Shocking Details Emerge as Secret Anti-Poaching Drive Takes Root’, 30 March 2015.

87 Ibid.

88 Author interviews with conservationists in Kenya and Tanzania, September 2015 to February 2016.