Help Stop Illegal Wildlife Trafficking

As much of the illegal wildlife trade in Southeast Asia has transitioned from the open markets of last century to digital platforms in this internet era, our Wildlife Rapid Rescue Team is increasingly engaging with the companies that can make or break this trade. For years, the Team has been identifying and reporting Facebook posts illegally advertising wild animals and wildlife products for sale and requesting the posts be removed and/or the accounts of serial violators be blocked. This approach has yielded mixed results, but in recent months fewer and fewer posts reported to Facebook have been removed. However, there are many smaller e-commerce platforms and related product or food delivery services that can also be unwitting facilitators of the illegal wildlife trade and the Team is developing new tools and strategies to engage these companies.

Over the past several months, we surveyed 15 local/regional online marketplace and e-commerce companies and identified 4 platforms with live wild animals or wildlife products for sale. Although all companies surveyed had policies forbidding the sale of illegal items, 10 of the companies did not have clear policies specifically about wildlife. We sent letters requesting meetings to all of the companies and three – Khmer24, Frogsell and Food Panda – replied and agreed to meet with us. WRRT staff had identified illegal wildlife for sale on all of these sites, two of which had policies against selling wildlife products and one did not have any policy.

In late May, the Team met with two local e-commerce platforms, Khmer 24 and Frogsell, to discuss illegal wildlife sales and specific posts on their websites that had been identified as advertising wildlife or wildlife parts for sale. After the meetings, both companies reacted well and deleted the specific posts we had reported to them and their staff also proactively found and removed additional posts advertising illegal wildlife items for sale. Within about a week of our meeting, the two companies had deleted a total of 42 posts selling wildlife!

In June, our Team met with Food Panda, an international franchise that offers food delivery services for restaurants in several Asian countries. We reported to their staff two illegal deer meat dishes we had identified that were posted on menus on their site and asked if they could develop a specific policy on wildlife, noting that Food Panda’s Singaporean branch had banned shark fins sales following a project with the World Wildlife Fund. Following our meeting, Food Panda removed the illegal deer meat dishes, introduced a similar ban against shark fin sales, and developed a policy against selling wildlife dishes for their Cambodian franchise.

The Team has also established relationships with key staff at each company and provides ongoing support. We created group chats on a messaging service with our Team members and their relevant staff and shared tools to help them understand Cambodian laws that protect wildlife, learn to identify wildlife species that are commonly illegally traded, and spot key words typically used in illegal sales posts. Each of these companies have now committed to applying current laws banning illegal wildlife sales, and communicate with us directly when they are not sure about certain items. This style of direct engagement and collaboration with online companies that are interested in helping to disrupt illegal wildlife sales online is a new avenue for our law enforcement team and we are pleased with the results thus far.

Gifts from GlobalGiving supporters like you offers the Team essential flexible funding that helps enable this type of experimentation and piloting of new approaches to fighting the illegal wildlife trade as it evolves. Thank you so much for your faith in us and ongoing support!