2 of 8

Côte d’Ivoire police sit with eight tons of seized pangolin scales. (Brent Stirton)

Scientist Yokyok Hadiprakarsa inspects seized hemeted hornbill casques. (Tim Laman)

Kenya prepares to burn tusks and ivory hankos. (Brent Stirton)

A Florida police officer photographs a confiscated songbird. (Karine Aigner)

The “what” and “why” of wildlife trade reporting (2m)

Quick background on wildlife trade and wildlife trade reporting

It’s become a more high-profile issue in the past 10 years
More media cover it, but not a lot
MANY stories are still untold
Not like covering climate change or COVID – there’s not a ton of competition with other journalists for these stories
More than enough stories to go around

Why report on wildlife trade?

Aside from there being lots of stories, it’s an important topic:
Raising awareness to protect threatened species
It’s a crime that promotes corruption and undermines regional stability
Accountability: wildlife crimes are often not treated seriously by law enforcement or the justice system
They’re good stories!
Don’t need to be an expert on wildlife trade
Jounos from many beats are well-prepared: environment reporters, crime, science, economics
Stories are easy to localize to your community—or to scale up to a national or international scope. Can focus on whatever piece is happening in your community, or step back and show how it fits into a country-wide or international trade

3 of 8

Global landscape of wildlife trade reporting

Nat Geo

How Nat Geo covers the illegal wildlife trade (IWT)/what Wildlife Watch is
Types of stories we do: poaching, illegal trade, legal trade (e.g. pets, aquarium fish), hunting, other types of exploitation
Global audience, global stories: Look for stories that are indicative of a larger trend.

Turning a local story global

Example: Local news reported that customs found a bunch of tarantulas hidden in TK. Used that as a jumping off point for a story about the illegal trade for pet tarantulas—what species are at risk, who’s doing the poaching and why, how they’re smuggled, and where the demand is coming from
Example: Got a report from an NGO about wild animals being taken from forests and brought to tourists for selfies outside a popular tourist destination in the Amazon. Further research 🡪 exploitive wildlife tourism is an international problem. Became a story about the most popular tourist attractions around the world that use wild animals – elephant rides and tiger selfies in Thailand; traveling circuses in Russia that haul whales and polar bears around with them; photo ops with sloths and anteaters in Brazil, etc.

4 of 8

CAN’T TRAVEL?

Social media as a reporting tool

- Gather color and scenes

- Identify potential sources

- Increase understanding

Facetime “travel”

Traditional reporting techniques

- Public records

- Phone calls – source development

- Read

How do you do a national or international story with little or no travel?

Social media as a reporting tool – ONE example only

Example: You get a tip that there’s an illegal market for, say, cheetahs. You want to get an idea of what the scope and scale of the trade is and see if you can convince anyone to talk to you.
First: find out what keywords are used. Usually it’s not the obvious ones. Talk to law enforcement, academics who study the illegal trade of wildlife online, and any inside sources involved with the trade.
Search those hashtags on the relevant platforms.
Won’t be catching everything, by any means—this isn’t a technique for trying to determine how many sellers there are or how many animals are sold
But you’ll get an idea of how an animal or product is marketed to buyers and possibly where some of the sellers are based. If you’re lucky, you could cultivate a new source.
Example: You want to investigate a tourist facility. Maybe a “Tiger King”-like attraction that breeds animals for tourist selfies, a sketchy zoo that has high animal turnover, or a place that calls itself a sanctuary that might not be (remember the Tiger Temple in Thailand?)
Use Instagram place search function to find photos that are geo-tagged to that location, and sort by recent
If there’s a specific business, search for posts that have tagged it
You’re probably not going to get any behind-the-scenes dirt, but you will get a feel for what the place is like—how it presents itself and what it looks like through visitors’ eyes. You can get color and even scenes this way.
Also useful for identifying potential sources: DM people who have posted photos from there recently. Look for staff who show up regularly in photos or post about their jobs.

Facetime ”travel”

Use journalist Facebook groups and your personal network to find someone in the place you’re reporting on
Get them to Facetime/Zoom/Skype you from that location
Good for: scenes, developing color

Traditional reporting techniques

Public records
Phone calls

5 of 8

GETTING STARTED

Know your ecosystem
Learn the basics about wildlife trade
Lay the groundwork to get stories
Start brainstorming

Clockwise from left: Elephant in Gorongosa National Park (Charlie Hamilton James), tourist poses with sloth in Brazil (Kirsten Luce), Somaliland’s anti-trafficking military unit on patrol (Nichole Sobecki)

Getting started

Know your ecosystem

Who’s your audience?
What’s important or relevant to them?
Are there certain parks, reserves, or species that are of particular significance to your audience? Are there certain ones that are at particular risk?

Learn

Find out what laws govern wildlife conservation and wildlife trade in your country. Know what agencies enforce them.
Understand CITES
Read GIJN’s guide

Lay the groundwork

Sign up for press email lists with the relevant government agencies, NGOs, and academic institutions
Reach out and introduce yourself to PR people.
They’re probably not the ones who’ll give you the good stories, but if they like you, you might get exclusives.
Reach out to the people doing the actual work: Researchers who have published on IWT lately, prosecutors involved in big cases, advocates, etc.

Start reporting out ideas

6 of 8

THINKING ABOUT STORIES

Topics: poaching, smuggling, consumer demand, etc. …

Characters: animals, traffickers, consumers, helpers…

Sources: government, NGOs, academics, public records, local communities…

Clockwise from top left: Rescued cheetah cubs, pet cheetah on Instagram, Somaliland Minister of Environment Shukri Haji Ismail Mohamoud, trial of cheetah smuggler (Nichole Sobecki)

How to think about wildlife trade stories

Topics

“Wildlife trade” is a broad term – illegal AND legal, e.g.
Food (sea urchins, tuna), medicinal herbs (ginseng), exotic pets (reptiles and amphibians), timber, ornamental plants (orchids, succulents), etc.
Stories can be done on every step of the supply chain. If you’re reporting on your own country, start by identifying what roles it plays and with what species.
Poaching, transportation and smuggling, sales/consumers/demand, wildlife parts/products, live animals

Characters

Bad guys vs. good guys (Somaliland cheetah story example)
When the bad guys aren’t all that bad (poachers) – opportunity for nuanced characters
Animals – sentient and intelligent. Don’t overlook their suffering

Sources – FOR TIPSHEET ONLY

GOVERNMENT

-Environment ministry – the national wildlife regulatory body usually falls under this

-Law enforcement and justice system – police, investigators, prosecutors. Local, regional, and national

NGOs

-Local nonprofits are most familiar with the issues in your community (goes without saying).

-Local nonprofits are likely to identify emerging patterns and problems

-National and international NGOs are great for putting things in context. TRAFFIC, Wildlife Justice Commission, and others.

-See tipsheet

ACADEMICS

-It’s tempting to go straight for the animal experts – and definitely do. But don’t stop there.

-IWT is like any other crime. Talk to people who study crime/criminals as a social phenomenon (criminologists) and people who study the criminal justice system.

-Crime doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Other types of social scientists, like sociologists and psychologists, can help you understand motives and causes.

-IWT also has a cultural component, especially on the demand side. Anthropologists, social scientists, and psychologists can help you there too.

-Look for the people working in the field

DATA AND RECORDS

-CITES trade database

-Find out what paperwork your government requires to be filed when an animal/animal part is imported or exported

-Court records

-Police reports

-Permits: zoo permits, hunting permits, breeding permits, etc.

-Get to know your country’s wildlife laws, and then learn what bureaucracy goes along with it

Some examples

Your country’s wildlife department and justice department

TRAFFIC

Wildlife Justice Commission

Zoological Society of London (ZSL)

Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS)

Freeland

International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW)

Human Society International (HSI)

Oxford WildCRU

WildAid

World Animal Protection

Alliance to Counter Crime Online

7 of 8

STORY SEEDLINGS

File public records requests for imports that have been seized by law enforcement
Examine loopholes in hunting, breeding, and wildlife ownership laws

Take a closer look at a legal trade. Could it be providing cover for a parallel illegal trade?

Go on patrol with a ranger or game warden. You never know what might happen.

Talk to law enforcement—get the inside scoop on a recently completed case.

Wander around a local market and see what’s for sale.

Shadow a wildlife inspector or customs agent at a port of entry.

Find out what wildlife parts and products are entering your community: shadow a wildlife inspector. File a public records request for imports, or seized (by law enforcement) imports specifically…That’s form 3-177 in the U.S., in the LEMIS database

Find out if poaching is a problem in your community. Poaching isn’t just elephants and rhinos. In North America, for example, deer, bears, sharks, sturgeons, and turtles are all poached. Talk to local game warders and rangers because they’re the first line of defense. Request to go on patrol with them. Even if you don’t get a story out of it, you’ll have laid the foundation for making a good source.

Wander around markets – this is more for people who live in areas where it’s not uncommon for wild meat or animal-based décor to be sold in public.

Find out if there are ever instances where endangered species can legally be killed or traded. That can be a loophole for smugglers to take advantage of. Who is allowed to breed and why?

e.g. Around 2006, Vietnamese criminal networks started sending their people to South Africa on rhino hunts, because rhino horn killed on a legal hunt could be legally exported under CITES. Turns out many of the “hunters” weren’t hunters at all. One network hired Thai prostitutes and strippers to do the hunts.

e.g. Illegitimate “zoos” obtain a zoo license so they can breed or import rare wildlife. Like the Tiger Temple in Thailand, where authorities seized 37 tigers in 2016 and shut the “sanctuary” down under suspicion of breeding and slaughtering tigers for the trade.