Global wildlife trafficking on the rise, aided by drug cartels

The Hill ^ | 9/02/23 | Rafael Bernal

[Libloather]

Global wildlife trafficking is on the rise, adding a dimension to transnational crime and increasing the risk that U.S. corporations could unwittingly become entangled in the illicit trade.

A new white paper by Moody’s Analytics highlights the growing risk for private enterprise, and the growing involvement of transnational crime in wildlife smuggling.

“Brands sometimes are involved in supply chains and they might not truly know who their supplier is,” said Richard Graham, Third Party Risk Management lead at Moody’s Analytics.

“If you’re doing business with someone that is a supplier that is involved in some sort of wildlife trafficking, via animals or probably more likely the wood from different endangered trees, that’s a very bad story for your brand. It impacts reputational risk, and also it’s probably illegal.”

Beyond reputational risks, wildlife trafficking is driving extinction, deforestation - particularly in the Amazon - as well as corruption at all levels of government.

The practice has also become an attractive market for transnational criminal organizations such as drug cartels, which can use the practice to avoid money laundering sanctions.

“The large Mexican criminal groups, the Cártel de Sinaloa and Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación are also involved in a wide variety of legal and illegal economies: timber, legal fishing as well as illegal fishing, water distribution and legal agriculture, are also increasingly involved in wildlife trafficking,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, an expert on international organized crime at the Brookings Institution.

“And they are paying in wildlife and timber products to Chinese criminal groups for their supply of precursor chemicals for the production of fentanyl,”...

**SNIP**

The wildlife trade is also attractive to large criminal enterprises because it doesn’t require involvement throughout the entire supply chain, and because there is a large gray area where illicit goods can filter into the formal economy.

[Libloather]

[qaz123]

Great news. Soon, species of animals will be invading our country and destroying the natural order of things like those giant pythons and boa constrictors are in Florida.

But, no one seems to care except for the people affected by it. Think of the ranchers out west. Wolves. The US had prairie wolves. Smaller versions of the timber wolves that have been introduced into areas of the US. The timber wolf is a completely different and destructive animal. Not the same ones of yesterday. And they wreak havoc on livestock.

But, hey, who the hell cares. Most people, especially those on the Left, think that tomatoes grow in the vegetable aisle and the hamburger is out behind the grocery store.

[Lou Foxwell]

It’s OK> The gov is going to fix it. A bill is pending in congress that will redefine the Lacey Act to list all but 100 animals as illegal to trade in the US. Of the 30,000 animals now in the trade 29,000 will be illegal to import or carry across state lines. This will keep DNR busy enough that the real criminals will breeze through wil no attention. The law will have the additional feature of removing all industry based protections on the most threatened biotopes, rendering them open to mining, farming, and logging. Thousands of species of animals now protected by the animal industry will be wiped out overnight. Hearings are being scheduled now.