World Wildlife Crime Report 2020: Trafficking in protected species

This report was published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) on July 10, 2020. It discusses wildlife crime – a lucrative global trade – and measures countries can take to tackle it.Wildlife crime is defined as the harvesting and trade of wild terrestrial animals, fish, trees, and other flora, in contravention of national laws, particularly those implemented in keeping with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES; a multilateral treaty adopted by the International Union for Conservation of Nature on March 3, 1973).The report uses data from UNODC’s World Wildlife Seizure (World WISE) database of roughly 180,000 seizures from 149 countries, which draws on annual seizure reports received from Parties to the Convention. Through case studies, the report presents the recent changes in the sourcing, transit and selling of illegal wildlife.The 134-page publication has eight chapters – including an introduction (Chapter 1) – covering the illegal trade of rosewood timber (Chapter 2), African elephant tusks and rhinoceros horns (Chapter 3), pangolin scales (Chapter 4), live reptiles (Chapter 5), big cats (Chapter 6) as well as European glass eels (Chapter 7). The report also examines the global flow of money created from the illegal trade of ivory and rhino horn (Chapter 8).