The analysis of wildlife trade data by Health Analytics Asia shows the extent to which the legal trade in wild animals has boomed in recent years writes Patrick Boehler, Managing Editor of the Environmental Reporting Collective.
By Patrick Boehler
Reporting on the wildlife trade can be a thankless job for a journalist. It can take months of sleuthing to go beyond anecdotal evidence or information provided by NGOs or the police. The trade is mostly unregulated, unreported, it’s not a priority of law enforcement or politicians or one’s editors, especially not during a pandemic.
One reason that makes it worth caring about is that it spurred this virus outbreak in the first place, bringing much of the world to a standstill. If nothing changes, it could cause the next pandemic too.
Much remains unclear about where, when and how the novel coronavirus jumped from bats to pangolins, humans and other species. But we do know that the growing wildlife trade brought these animals into closer contact with livestock and meat traders in China and across Southeast Asia.
The analysis of wildlife trade data by Health Analytics Asia published last week shows the extent that the legal trade in wild animals has boomed in recent years. It also indicates that well-meaning attempts to curb wildlife trade in the aftermath of the SARS epidemic in 2003 were short-lived.
Its author, Anuja Venkatachalam, makes a strong case why this matters: “Doctors and environmentalists unequivocally point to the increase in human-animal contact as a result of deforestation, wildlife trade and consumption, as causes for the recurrence of novel zoonotic viruses.”
That should make law enforcement, politicians and newsrooms editors think twice about not prioritising this issue.
But one major problem is that much of this trade is undeclared and often outright illegal. So tracking it beyond anecdotal evidence, understanding the size and scope of the illicit trade is a devilishly hard endeavour.
Last year, I was part of a group of journalists from Asia and Africa who collaborated to investigate the trade of pangolins, a scaly anteater that resembles an artichoke. International trade in the endangered animal and its parts is banned but has boomed because of spurious medicinal claims of some Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioners.
My colleagues led by Hu Pili spent weeks looking into possible sources of data. It turns out that while there are no direct data on the illegal trade, there is plenty of secondary evidence that can shed light on trends in volume, routes, consumption and law enforcement.
One primary indicator of trade patterns is the price. It goes up as intermediaries need to be paid for transport and officials for looking the other way. We tracked it here.
Another great source is court records. Many countries have searchable databases on criminal and civil judgements, that can provide valuable insights into the trade and law enforcement priorities. It points to regional hotspots and sheds light on the modus operandi of trafficking syndicates.
A review of such records showed us how pangolin scales enter China on the land route from Myanmar and Vietnam and by ship, often via Hong Kong and Singapore. One finding was that the number of seized shipments from Africa had grown significantly. In Vietnam, we plotted police reports on seizures on a map to identify a key smuggling routefrom Laos to China.
Here’s the non-extensive list of the data sourceswe found. If you have suggestions on other possible data sources, get in touch at contact@investitigative.earth.
(Patrick Boehler is the managing editor of the Environmental Reporting Collective, a group of environmental journalists.)
