One animal welfare agency is more like a spy agency. A team goes undercover and meets with exotic wildlife smugglers to send information back to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
According to The Washington Post, Andrea Crosta founded the Los Angeles-based Earth League International nonprofit. One of its recent missions was in Suriname, South America.
What's happening?
Crosta and Mark Davis, a former FBI and intelligence chief, were sitting at a table in a restaurant in Suriname while their top undercover agent, Alpha, was meeting with a target, "a Chinese currency trader with ties to a wildlife-trafficking network," per the Post.
He was inquiring about Jaguars — how much is it for fangs and a large male carcass?
The DHS only authorized wildlife trafficking investigations in 2023 through the Homeland Security Investigations unit, the Post detailed. It has limited capabilities for running missions in places like Suriname. That's where Earth League International comes in. It gathers the intelligence and passes it on. Unfortunately, it doesn't know if the agency will act on its information.
According to the Post, HSI "ranks wildlife trafficking as the fourth-largest source of illicit revenue globally after drugs, human smuggling and counterfeit goods."
It added, "The wildlife trade generates $23 billion a year for transnational criminal organizations."
Poachers can earn as much as $3,000 for a jaguar, and traffickers who process the animals can make even more.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare reported 1,945 illegal wildlife tracking and poaching cases in 18 Spanish-speaking countries between 2017 and 2022.
Wildlife traffickers typically don't just traffic animals. They also traffic drugs and people.
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Definitely 👍 Vanda Felbab-Brown, Brookings Institution wildlife trafficking researcher, told the Post, "It's symptomatic of the voracious capitalism of the cartels over legal and illegal economies."
Why is combating jaguar trafficking important?
According to World Animal Protection, there are only 173,000 jaguars left in the world. They are classified as near threatened.
As well as deserving a place in the world, jaguars play a vital role in the ecosystem. As a top predator, they keep the population of other animals balanced for a healthy ecosystem, per the World Wildlife Fund.
Biodiversity is essential for a healthy ecosystem, as it is needed for the air you breathe and the food you eat, noted the Royal Society, which identifies itself as "the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence."
What's being done about jaguar trafficking?
While Earth League International gathers intel about trafficking operations to inform U.S. authorities, other organizations, like WWF, are also trying to protect jaguars. Locally, the organization is "conducting jaguar monitoring, promoting best practices in productive landscapes, managing human-jaguar conflict, reducing jaguar killings, and contributing to improved management in protected areas."
It also tries to educate, engage, and raise money nationally and internationally. You can help by donating to organizations working to protect these animals.
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