There are major issues surrounding legal wildlife trade that have been overlooked

As I looked at the latest third edition of the United Nations Office on Drugs And Crime World Wildlife Crime (UNODC) Report last week, a childhood memory flashed through my mind. It was the vision of a traveling zoo in a fair I had visited near my house in Kolkata. Even at that young and impressionable age, I recall the impact the captive animals made on me. Cooped in cages and containers hardly larger than their own bodies were leopards, lions, porcupines, jackals, monkeys, parrots, pelicans and several snakes. Vivid in my mind remains the image of a Gharial in a cement tub, repeatedly being poked by an attendant whenever a visitor passed him by, so there was some movement to observe. This flagrant and mindlessly cruel exhibition of human entertainment and vanity made me think if the whole spectacle was moral or legal, even when I was not very familiar with legalities of wildlife protection.

I now realise, that even in the 1980s, when I witnessed this egregious show of captive animals, the animals had been illegally acquired and such traveling menageries were subsequently and thankfully declared illicit by the Central Zoo Authority and shut down. However, this singular and sordid experience of wildlife abuse remains germane to many revelations made in the recently published World Wildlife Crime Report.

The report concludes that illegal wildlife trade persists worldwide despite two decades of concerted action at international and national levels. There are indeed some signs of progress in reducing the impacts of trafficking for some iconic species, for which a combination of efforts from both the demand and supply side have yielded positive outcomes.

However, UNODC’s assessment of available evidence gives no certainty that wildlife trafficking overall is being substantially reduced. It is important here to recognise that although the overwhelming focus and attention of enforcement and research agencies has been on illegal wildlife trade, there are major issues surrounding legal wildlife trade that have been overlooked in the media and in the ongoing narrative. The example of a traveling zoo as a demonstration of moral bankruptcy as well as violation of legal statutes illustrates that wildlife crime has multifarious layers.

According to the UN report, the transnational scale of wildlife crime remains substantial, with seizures during 2015-2021 indicating an illegal trade in 162 countries and territories affecting around 4,000 plant and animal species. International organised crime groups are active in many wildlife markets, where they exploit inconsistencies and weaknesses in regulation and enforcement, adapting their methods and routes continuously to evade detection and subsequent prosecution.

Corruption plays a key role in undermining regulation and enforcement actions against wildlife trade. A recent report by World Animal Protection (the organisation I work with) entitled Bred for profit: The truth about global wildlife farming shows an estimated 5.5 billion wild animals being kept in cruel conditions on commercial wildlife farms around the world. Researchers have found an astonishing lack of transparency and inadequate monitoring across the global multi-billion-dollar industry, where sentient animals are treated as mere components in a cruel production line. Shockingly, some captive wildlife populations are now larger than those living free.

Case studies in the report detail some of the industries where urgent action is needed – including:

• Bear farming in China — Some 20,000 bears are farmed for their bile on dozens of farms to satiate the demand of the bear bile industry in the country.

• Elephant breeding in Thailand — The majority of nearly 3,000 elephants in the country are bred in captivity and used in 246 venues for tourism. Between 2010 and 2020, the number of elephant venues increased by a staggering 134 per cent. 

• Lion and other big cat farming in South Africa — Approximately 8,000 big cats are bred at 366 known facilities in the country and used for multiple purposes including for tourist entertainment, trophy hunting and body parts exports to Asia for traditional medicine.

While some wildlife trade and wildlife farming practices are legal, researchers have now started questioning the impact of legal wildlife trade on conservation and animal welfare. Neil D’Cruze, a wildlife researcher with decades of experience in investigating both legal and illegal wildlife trade, says, “Conservationists typically bear the burden of proving the need for legislation to curb wildlife trade, rather than the wildlife trade industry having to justify its practices. Essentially, this means that, for those who value wild animals beyond their economic worth, wildlife trade laws seem upside down and are fundamentally flawed.”

Intelligent animals, like this Spider Monkey in Guwahati Zoo, require legal and moral protection from wildlife trade. Photograph: Payel Biswas

Indeed, a new book named The Case for Legal Protection of Animals: Understanding Humanity’s Shared Destiny With the Animal Kingdom by Kimberly Crowder Moore cogently makes the case for greater moral consideration in legal protection statutes currently being applied to animals.

“My principal concern with most legal systems is that they classify animals as “property”, which has allowed animals to be exploited and abused by nearly every industry. Anti-cruelty laws have failed to protect even our beloved companion animals, and these laws fail to protect large numbers of animals, including animals raised for food and animals used in research,” says Crowder Moore. “In addition to addressing the legal status of animals, the current regulatory framework for animal protection remains inadequate, exemplified by the alarming decline in wildlife populations and the exponential rise in species extinctions.”

It seems apparent in the current wildlife protection discourse that there is a distinction between jurisdiction and jurisprudence regarding animals. ‘Jurisdiction’ refers to the legal authority and regulatory framework that governs the treatment of animals in a particular legal framework. In contrast, ‘jurisprudence’ for animals pertains to the philosophical or theoretical framework guiding how animals should be treated under the legal system. The latter takes into account ethical considerations and the rights of animals, which have not yet been afforded to animals. This distinction lies at the root of the contention surrounding wildlife trade that although some wildlife trade may be legal, it may remain immoral.

A recent spurt in exotic animal seizures in India and the ongoing debate on elephant rescue and rehabilitation point to the need for greater transparency, stricter enforcement of laws and enhanced morality in dealing with sentient creatures that are capable of sharing many human emotions.

Recent publications like the ones mentioned in this feature call upon us to accelerate our endeavours to bolster lawful and moral protection to tackle both legal and illegal wildlife trade. The traveling menageries of India of yesteryears, bereft of legal and moral status, are extinct today. It is a sobering thought that the latest UNODC report is a wakeup call to cherish the biodiversity all around us by protecting it from exploitation and abuse.

Shubhobroto Ghosh is Wildlife Campaign Manager at World Animal Protection and author of the book, ‘Dreaming In Calcutta and Channel Islands.’

Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth

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