‘Parrots for Sale’: The Internet’s role in the illicit wildlife trade
Other cyber-crimes, like drug sales and images of child sexual abuse, have typically been pushed into encrypted spaces such as the dark net, but much of the online illicit wildlife trade remains in plain sight.
SHIROMA SILVA: Row after row of thin barred cages hold brilliantly coloured birds whose screeches fill the air with a deafening noise. Faiz Ahmed sits at a desk, oblivious, as he turns to a team of undercover BBC News journalists. He’s busy with his business of importing and selling birds. It’s a popular line of trade in Bangladesh, where he’s based, particularly among people with connections and money to invest.
The conversation had started over the purchase of legal captive-bred parrots, but turned to a particular species, the African grey. “Wild grey parrots are good. Many people are breeding from wild ones,” he says… It is illegal under international law to sell wild-caught African greys, which are endangered and on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Red List. However, Faiz calmly told us how he could evade checks at customs…
Yet while it is well known there is illegal activity, wildlife campaigners have had to rely largely on anecdotal evidence to gauge its nature and extent. The often-elusive nature of material on the internet has made evidence gathering very ad hoc. And the tactics of sellers, wise to the online platforms trying to detect their activity, can make the job doubly difficult…
Online harms such as disinformation, hate and extremism are coming under increased scrutiny. But some conservationists feel environmental crime has not received the attention it deserves, and that platforms have come under less pressure to respond to it.
“They have the technological capacity to deal with this overnight if there is a will,” says wildlife expert Chris Packham. “If I had my finger on the conservation purse, I’d spend a lot more money tackling these tech-led issues – because we’re underestimating how much damage is being done and we’ve got to change that. “We have to elevate the position of wildlife crime, because it impacts on all of our lives”…
On the surface, the illicit wildlife trade is as it always has been – secret shipment routes, forged customs documents, and covert warehouses. But how we’ve arrived at Faiz’s establishment is a sign of how drastically the illicit trade in endangered plants and animals has transformed. He has been openly advertising the sale of endangered birds and animals across social media…
Other cyber-crimes, like drug sales and images of child sexual abuse, have typically been pushed into encrypted spaces such as the dark net, but much of the online illicit wildlife trade remains in plain sight. Traffickers might use tools such as Facebook Stories to make the content viewable briefly. But there is also a large collection of smaller websites, from classified advert sites in Africa and Asia to specific forums for collectors and enthusiasts, where ownership of these animals is normalised and applauded…
“The internet has made the setting up of trade routes much easier, and buyers and sellers can communicate with each other much more easily than before,” says Simone Haysom, from Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime (Gitoc)… A new project led by Gitoc, bringing together conservationist and technology partners, uses machine learning to identify the language traffickers use. “Jitot”, for example, means a fully tamed bird, while “raw” signifies wild and plentiful…
So far, the project has found more than 4,500 classified adverts for African greys, among 10,000 likely cases of endangered plants and animals being offered for sale. And this is likely to be the tip of the iceberg, as the project works to expand its search to illicit commodities, such as bear bile and ivory… Meanwhile Faiz’s warehouse remains full of birdsong, the forests where these populations live have fallen silent. SOURCE…
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