The Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) has released its 2017/2018 integrated report, which for the first time is supplemented by additional digital content about the organisation's work. CEO, Yolan Friedmann, has penned an insightful opener, addressing the issues surrounding illegal wildlife trade:

“The illegal wildlife trade is nothing new, and has appeared among some of humanity’s worst traits for centuries. In 2017 and 2018, this issue featured more strongly in the rhetoric of politicians, global media, and the public, as we began to face the very real possibility of losing a number of species if serious action is not taken.

Human beings have been trading for around 300 000 years. Evidence from Middle Stone Age sites in southern Kenya suggests that hominins were exchanging goods with others, as weapons uncovered at these sites are made of materials not locally found. The ancient Grecians had Hermes as their god of trade and the Roman god Mercurius was their god of merchants.

Given the human propensity for breaking laws as soon as they are established, one can assume that human beings have also been trading illegally for as long as there have been laws to regulate trade. So why the increasing fuss around Illegal Wildlife Trade? It is not a new issue and rather, is one that conservationists have been grappling with for decades.

So what has changed? On the upside, many countries and cultures that previously engaged in enormous volumes of wildlife trade have decreased their consumptive use of wildlife. In several countries, there is a strong awareness that many wildlife species cannot sustain large volumes of trade; that the trade is often cruel and unethical; and that better alternatives for their uses (fashion, medicinals, and so on) are available for less money. In some cultures, the use and trade in wildlife has even become stigmatised.

On the downside, the consumption of wildlife and their products has increased in many parts of the world, due to increasing wealth, popular beliefs, financial speculation and ‘investment’, and ease of access to illicit markets. Coupled with the decline in many species and the associated increasing value of their body parts; the free flow of illicit goods via established black markets; the ease of access for buyers and sellers to social networks and the “Dark Web”; the escalation in corruption globally, and its impact on law enforcement; and the dynamic nature of illicit trade flows, it is little wonder that several species now face a very real extinction risk. Or may already have succumbed. South Africa has, although not many people know this, already lost three cycad species to illegal trade in the past decade and several others face a similar future.

Around 100 elephants and three rhinos are poached every day across our continent. One need only do the maths to estimate how long populations of around 415 000 elephants and 29 000 rhinos will persist. Much has been said about various solutions and those that are attached to their favourite solution will go to great lengths to slate alternative options. But before we can propose conservation-oriented solutions, we need to consider a few contributing factors, most of which have nothing whatsoever to do with the conservation sector or even what we do or say.

Report by the Endangered Wildlife Trust