Illegal Wildlife Trade: The Surprising Ease of Doing Business on Social Media

WWhen the baby parrots were delivered to Alice Soares de Oliveira’s desk, they had no wings and could barely open their eyes. The pair, housed in a dirty cardboard box, were just a month old and showed signs of not feeding well.

The parrot, along with two young toucans who arrived just under a month later, were victims of wildlife traffickers. They were all put up for sale on social media, probably snatched from their mother’s nest by poachers.

They were taken to Soares de Oliveira, a veterinarian. CeMaCAS, Wildlife Conservation Center in a forest on the outskirts of Brazil’s largest city, São Paulo, after being rescued by police surveillance networks on platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp.

Social media has become an important tool for wildlife traffickers, experts say. For example, more people are using Facebook to promote the sale of endangered animals and their byproducts, often switching to messaging apps like WhatsApp to complete the sale.

Report published in October The Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime flagged 477 advertisements for 18 protected animals in Brazil and South Africa alone in three months this year. 78% of this was on social media.

Simone Haytham, director of environmental crime at the Global Initiative, said traders moved online after authorities cracked down on street markets. “The online space now provides a means for many of the world’s most endangered and most highly protected species to find consumers,” she says. “There’s a huge treasure trove of endangered species available for purchase online, but it’s no easy feat.”

Crawford Allan, vice president of nature crime at the World Wildlife Fund, said the pandemic has “systemized” wildlife crime online. “A lot of the public markets were closing down,” he says. “People couldn’t move, a lot of things went online, and it became the norm.”

Laws regarding the sale of wild animals vary by jurisdiction and species, so social media companies face a difficult situation in determining whether such ads are illegal. Nevertheless, experts say tech companies need to do more to determine when posts are risky.

Global Initiative combines AI technology and human analysis to detect suspicious ads online. The company’s reporting system, part of a project called Eco-Solve, covers Brazil, South Africa and Thailand, and will soon be expanded to India, Indonesia and the UAE.

Richard Scobie, executive director of TRAFFIC, an organization focused on wildlife trafficking, said advertising on social media allows sellers to “circumvent” the law and sell goods without telling buyers where they come from. He says it happens often.

“Companies need to allocate far more resources to regulating how users illegally trade wildlife parts and derivatives on their platforms,” ​​he says. “Social media companies are working to combat illegal transactions on their platforms…but there is much more they can do.”

Some tech companies are taking steps to combat this problem. In 2020, Facebook introduced tags for some search terms to warn users of the dangers of wildlife trafficking, and meta was removed. 7.6 million posts in 2023according to the Coalition Against Online Wildlife Trafficking.

The coalition is a voluntary association that includes most of the major social media companies in the United States and China.

It announced that in 2021, 11.6 million posts were blocked or deleted by members.

WWF’s Alan was a founding member of the federation and continues to oversee its activities. He said tech companies have been receptive to activists’ attempts to clamp down on their activities, but job cuts in the industry are hurting progress.

“As a conservation organization, we always feel that people need to do more, but we also understand that they are dealing with terrorism, child safety and all the evil in the world that flows through social media channels. They have bigger and scarier problems to deal with,” he added.

“I feel that some companies have found a balance. Others haven’t. They’re not working hard enough or they’re inactive for some reason, so they step up and do more. You need to make an effort.”

A spokesperson for Meta, which owns Facebook and WhatsApp, said: “We do not allow activities related to the purchase, sale, lottery, gifting, transfer or trading of endangered or protected species on our services.

“We use a combination of technology, team reviews, and user reports to identify behavior that violates our Terms of Service and respond to valid requests from law enforcement.”

Wildlife trafficking threatens biodiversity and can lead to the extinction of certain species. According to 2023 Forensic Science International articlesapproximately 5,209 animal species are endangered or nearly endangered due to “use and trade.”

Mr Haytham said: [being advertised for sale online] It is protected as it is on the verge of extinction. They are protected because trade poses a major threat to their survival. ”

Soares de Oliveira of São Paulo believes the birds in his care have a bright future. Veterinarians at CeMaCAS care for hundreds of birds and animals at a time. She is confident that the parrot and toucan will make a full recovery and be released back into the wild.

“They are in the middle of rehabilitation. They are still young so we are monitoring them, but I think they will be able to live a free life in three months,” she says.

Find more coverage of extinction ages here and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on the Guardian app for more nature coverage.