Help Stop Illegal Wildlife Trafficking

Wildlife traders are increasingly using online using platforms like Facebook to advertise illegal animals and products and connect with interested buyers, but social media can also be a tool in the fight against wildlife crime. The Wildlife Rapid Rescue Team (WRRT) relies on tips from people all over the country to help fulfill their nationwide mandate to crackdown on the illegal trade in Cambodia. While it operates a Wildlife Rescue Hotline that people can call 24/7 to report crimes, more and more people are reporting tips to WRRT via Facebook and the team is conducting more online investigations to identify and root out traders.

Following a recent online investigation into an illegal bird trader selling on Facebook, WRRT identified the trader, located his trading house in Phnom Penh, and conducted a raid. The team rescued 18 live birds, including a red-billed blue magpie, one common and three white-vented mynas, two black-collared starlings and 11 Red breasted Parakeets, and the trader was fined $225. In another case, the WRRT Facebook page received a report about a jackal being kept in a small cage at the bottom of Phnom Kulen (Kulen Mountain) in Siem Reap Province. Our team was able to track the owner of the jackal to a military station and confiscate the animal. One of WRRT’s most significant cases for 2020 also came from a Facebook tip-off from a concerned citizen who reported that an entertainment park in Kandal Province had recently started keeping wildlife. The WRRT’s investigation revealed that although the powerful tycoon owner had no permits, know-how or proper facilities to do so, he was keeping significant numbers of wild animals. During the ensuing raid, the team rescued 90 animals of 25 different species including: 1 Malayan sun bear, 1 binturong, 1 pileated gibbon, 2 Asiatic jackal, 2 leopard cats, 2 species of deer, 10 species of birds, and 11 elongated tortoises. He was fined $4,252.50 under the Fisheries Law and $4,780 under the Forestry Law.

These are just a few recent examples of how WRRT is using Facebook to gather intelligence from concerned Facebook users investigate and to gather evidence against and track down wildlife traders. Unfortunately, many animals rescued from the illegal pet trade have become habituated to humans and cannot be released because they do not have the skills to survive in the wild. Animals that could not be released immediately were brought to Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Centre for rehabilitation and care.

Your generous donations help WRRT fight wildlife crime using all available tools and technologies – thank you so much! And if you plan to make another donation this year, please do so on Giving Tuesday when GlobalGiving will distribute $1 million in matching funds among all projects that raise money on December 1, 2020 between 12:00AM-11:59PM Eastern Standard Time.