The Crimes of Wildlife Trafficking

Issues of Justice, Legality and Morality

Ragnhild Aslaug Sollund

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781317008583
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Law Theory & Practice
• Index: Law

This book examines trade and trafficking in endangered animal species and how the trade increasingly puts large numbers of nonhuman species at risk. Focusing on illegal trafficking, the book also discusses the harmful aspects of the trade and trafficking which is taking place in concordance with laws and regulations. Drawing on the findings of empirical research from Norway and Colombia, the study discusses how this global, transnational trend is addressed, and features of the trade and the ways in which it is controlled in the two case study locations. It also explores the motives driving the trade, and the consequences in terms of animal abuse and environmental harm. The book discusses whether internationally agreed measures, such as international conventions, actually help prevent the trade. Possible ways to address the harms of wildlife trade are considered, including a total ban. The work draws on a green criminology and eco feminist theoretical framework to provide a broad perspective on concepts such as harm, animal rights, species justice and speciesism.

1
Introduction to the legal and illegal abduction, theriocide and trafficking of endangered animals

The legal and illegal trade in free-born animals is an increasing problem worldwide. It is causing the extinction of many species, destruction of entire ecosystems and unspeakable harm to each individual who is victimized. Usually, the human society is recognized as the victim of the illegal wildlife trade because local communities lose ‘resources’ when non-human animals are illegally abducted and killed and because of threats against human security when terrorist groups are involved. In this book, however, the main concern is the direct victims. My main motives for this research are the serious dangers the trade poses for species survival and the ecosystems that are home to the trafficked victims, and last but not least, the harms committed against each individual animal as s/he is turned into a commodity – dead or alive. My focus on animals does not imply that I do not find the illegal trade in endangered plant species important. To the contrary, this trade can destroy ecosystems just as effectively as removing an animal species from its ecosystem can. However, the fact that nonhuman animals, like human animals, are sentient beings (Regan 1987) who therefore suffer from being abducted from their habitats, turned into property, and trafficked and sold, just as humans would suffer under such treatment, has determined my focus. In an anthropocentric world, those who are most often applauded are those who side with human interests. Still, my hope is that this book will move readers and policy makers to think of animal trafficking as a parallel to human trafficking and appreciate the harms involved in the trade, whether legal or illegal. Although human slavery has not de facto ended with a declaration of human rights, this declaration has contributed as a support for a general legal ban of this phenomenon, thus strengthening human rights and dignity (Sollund 2013b). A prohibition against animal slavery and trafficking could do the same.

This should indicate that I adhere to the perspectives and values raised in the field of green, or ecoglobal, criminology (see, e.g., Beirne 2014; Beirne and South 2007; Brisman and South 2014; Ellefsen et al. 2012; White 2013), and my concern is both with what is currently criminalized and punishable (although maybe not punished) and that which is harmful but not (yet) acknowledged as ‘crime’ (see Hillyard et al. 2004; Sollund 2015c; South 1998, 2008; Lynch and Stretesky 2014; Walters 2010; White 2013). Green criminology is a fast-developing field of criminology with a particular concern for harms and crimes committed against the natural environment and those who live in it (e.g., White 2011, 2013; Sollund and Brisman 2017; South 1998; Benton 1998; Beirne and South 2008; Brisman and South 2014; Lynch and Stretesky 2014; Lynch et al. 2015; Sollund 2015a). Rather than having an anthropocentric point of departure only, concern for ecosystems and non-human animals is widely recognized, as is a focus on power structures that permit such harms (e.g., White 2013; Beirne 1999, 2009; Brisman 2014; Brisman and South 2014; Lynch and Stretesky 2014; Stretesky et al. 2013; van Uhm 2016b; Sollund 2008b, 2011, 2012a, 2013b, 2015a; Wyatt 2014b; Goyes and Sollund 2016; Maher and Sollund 2016 a, b). Considering myself a green criminologist, I have a particular concern for the direct victims of wildlife trade and wish to draw attention to them more than to the illegality involved in wildlife trafficking (henceforth WLT) because, as I will discuss, this breach of law is one in which the direct victim is most often overlooked as the crime is treated as a conflict between the state and the offender (Christie 1977). Accordingly, one issue to be discussed in this regard is whether the laws and regulations governing the animal trade harm the animals more than they protect them. Furthermore, laws and regulations change with time, yet the harm involved in animal trafficking remains constant.

This research thus adopts a critical victimology perspective – a non-speciesist approach focused on animals as the first and most important victims of the trade (Fitzgerald 2010; Maher and Sollund 2016a, 2016b; Wyatt 2013). Animal abuse has for nearly two decades been included as a legitimate field of green criminology in its own right (Beirne 1999, 2009; Cazaux 1999; Sollund 2008b, 2012a; White 2013). The research described in this book follows this tradition.

My purpose with the book is consequently neither to provide an overview of WLT, whether legal or illegal, nor to produce an overview of all the different instruments available internationally to control and prevent the trade. This was done extensively by Wyatt (2013), Schneider (2012) and, in the EU context, by Fajardo del Castillo (2016). Rather, my intent is to conduct a close analysis of what motivates the different actors involved in the trade (buyers/consumers of live animals and animal products, abductors/killers/traffickers of free-born animals) and to explore different dimensions of the trade and the ways in which trafficking is controlled and prevented in two countries: Norway and Colombia.

In this first chapter I will define central concepts concerning wildlife trafficking. I will then provide an introduction and brief overview of the phenomenon of the trade and trafficking in endangered animal species. What usually receives attention is the illegal trade in endangered species, whatever the species, although special attention is given to iconic species like elephant, rhino and tiger. This was the case at the London conference held in February 2014 (Foreign & Commonwealth Office 2014), with British royalty playing an important part and from which an international declaration against wildlife trafficking was produced, signed by 40 countries in addition to the European Union. In this book, I do not exclude the victims of the legal wildlife trade because, from the perspective of the animals, whether they are trafficked legally or illegally is irrelevant. Still, given my background as a criminologist and the data sources on which this book is based (see Chapter 2 on methodology), I have a special interest in discussing the effects of criminalization and regulation of this harm, and also the effects (or lack of effect) of punishment currently applied when a criminalized act of animal trafficking is committed.

The term ‘wildlife’ is usually applied to both animals and plants, e.g., by TRAFFIC¹ that states on its website, ‘TRAFFIC believes in a world where wild-life trade maintains wildlife populations and contributes to sustainable human development.’ Both plants and animals are regarded as resources that are there for human benefit. My focus, however, is on individuals of animal species, rather than on the illegal trade in endangered timber, medicinal plants and orchids, because I don’t think animals’ purpose in life is to provide resources for humans. Like Wyatt (2013: 21), I include in my research animals who are bred as a commodity or provide service to humans, whether for medicinal use or for entertainment, and who are not domesticated in the sense that they are physically and psychically ill-adapted to a life of captivity under human control. Burgener and colleagues (in South and Wyatt 2011: 546) suggest the following definitions for trade and trafficking:

Trade encompasses collection, harvesting, possession, processing, acquiring or transporting of wildlife for the purpose of purchasing, importing, exporting, selling, bartering or exchanging. Wildlife trafficking or the illegal wildlife trade is the specific name of the green crime that involves the illegal trade, smuggling, poaching, capture or collection of endangered species, protected wildlife… derivatives or products thereof.

As this is an anthropocentric definition, I amend it in a way which serves more justice to the victims:

Trade [²] encompasses legal and illegal abduction, possession, processing, acquiring or transporting of free-born animals for the purpose of purchasing, importing, exporting, selling, bartering or exchanging them through taking them as captives. Trafficking in free-born animals involves the legal and illegal trade, smuggling, abduction, theriocide and collection of animals pertaining to (often endangered) animal species, either alive or by turning them into products.

(Sollund 2013b: 319; emphasis original)

Although I dislike the term ‘wildlife,’ I will retain it when discussing illegal wild-life trafficking (IWT) and wildlife trafficking (WT) for simplicity’s sake, where it refers to the practices of illegally or legally taking/abducting animals from their habitat, and killing, transporting and trading them.³ But these terms will be used interchangeably with ‘trafficking in free-born animals,’ even if I find them problematic. While the term ‘trafficking’ implies that the trade is illegal,⁴ my reason for applying the term, irrespective of legality, is that the legal status of the harm is irrelevant for the animal victims involved; their victimization is my main concern. Furthermore, even though animals are bred in captivity, they are still ill-adapted to humans and human conditions. Consequently, parrots and reptiles who are bred for sale in the pet⁵ trade, tigers and bears who are bred and kept captive for traditional Chinese medicine/traditional Asian medicine (TCM/TAM), and animals kept in zoos are included in the definition of ‘wildlife trafficking.’ The black bears who are captured to be caged so that their bile, a traditional medicine, can regularly be collected through a hole in their stomach and black bears who are bred for this reason in Asia to supply the market with bear bile (Foley et al. 2011) are both wildlife. Tigers are exploited because various body parts are seen as efficacious; for example, their whiskers are a good luck talisman and their bones are believed to hold special curing properties, for which reasons they are also bred in captivity. These animals are also subject to wildlife trafficking, even though by definition many of these are not born free. Lions, bred to be killed by trophy hunters in canned hunts, are also regarded as incorporated into this definition.

CITES⁶ – the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (henceforth either ‘CITES’ or ‘Convention’) – regulates the trade in endangered species. The Convention currently has 184 parties to the convention, including the EU. The purpose of the Convention is not to ban trade in free-born animals, but to prevent trade leading to species extinction. CITES is an anthropocentric instrument which sees ‘wildlife,’ whether animal or plant species, as resources for human use (Sollund 2011; Goyes and Sollund 2016). Species are listed in three appendices: Appendix I includes species threatened with extinction. Trade in individuals of these species is permitted only in exceptional circumstances. Appendix II includes species not necessarily threatened with extinction, but in which trade must be controlled in order to avoid utilization incompatible with their survival. Appendix III species are those that are protected in at least one country, and for which the country asks CITES for help to control the trade.⁷ If listed in one of the CITES appendices, animals are covered by the Convention whether or not they were free born or bred. Whenever possible, I will clarify whether the animals I am discussing were bred to be trafficked or were taken from their habitats. I will further return to a discussion about CITES in Chapter 12.

A green criminologist trying not to write anthropocentrically encounters many problems. For example, the term ‘animal’ is othering because it implies a sharp contrast between humans and other animal species, as it underlines and creates differences rather than recognizes our shared features and interests. ‘Animal’ implies all non-human animal species are the same, rather than the multitude of different species with different capacities and interests. The division is illogical because humans have much more in common with some other species, for example, orangutans and chimpanzees, than some non-human species have with each other, for example, a chimpanzee and a crab. Authors arguing for non-speciesist language have resolved the problematic nature of the word and the meaning of ‘animal’ in different ways: nonhuman animal (Nibert 2002: 23), animals other than human animals (AOTHAs) (Beirne 1999: 118), and other than human animals (Kheel 2008). The human species, however, is still the yardstick, and other species remain a unified category rather than being recognized for the diversity they truly represent. These designations still leave us with the othering of nonhuman species through language and do not free us from a contrasting of humans and ‘the rest,’ so these solutions remain unsatisfactory. One can also opt for abbreviated terms – ‘companion animals’ becomes ‘compans’ (Sollund 2011). This is easier to write, but fails to add significantly in other respects because ‘animal’ is retained. Perhaps for simplicity, one could also choose ‘nhanimal’ for nonhuman animal.

One issue in this regard is that the word ‘human,’ and by extension ‘humane,’ holds positive connotations for most humans in contrast to ‘animal’ and ‘beast’ (Adams 1996). Derridá (2002) convincingly explores the word ‘animal’ as a construct that reflects no ontological reality. Beirne (2007), from a constructivist perspective, also argues for the consequence of non-anthropocentric language, emphasizing like Derridá the importance language has in shaping our thoughts and attitudes, and consequently also our world as we see it and act in it (see also Searle 1995). Still for Beirne, style wins in the choice between ‘nonhuman animal’ and ‘animal.’ Lacking any really good alternatives, I choose, like Beirne, to prioritize style and remain with the term ‘animal,’ rather than the heavy ‘nonhuman animal,’ a solution with which I am not entirely happy. To emphasize that they are individuals rather than objects, I use ‘s/he’ rather than ‘it’ and ‘who’ rather than ‘that’ when referring to animals.

In relation to the specific topic of this book, the fact that animal victims are often taken from where they were born as free individuals is an important part of their victimization and the abuse they suffer; they are turned into captives with the trauma this involves, and if not killed, turned into commodities. This dimension involves the contrast between ‘domesticated’ and ‘wild’ and should be transparent in the language used to address the problem. This, however, is also tricky. As argued elsewhere (Sollund 2014), ‘domesticated’ should imply that someone is made part of the household, like some animal species were ten thousand years ago when humans started to keep pigs, cows and sheep (Børresen 1996; Nibert 2013; Noske 1989). The term ‘domestication,’ or in Norwegian ‘temme,’ has implications derived from an anthropocentric mindset. It indicates that animals are adapted to a human household and that the animal, during this p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of tables
• Preface and acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction to the legal and illegal abduction, theriocide and trafficking of endangered animals
• 2 Methodology and ecophilosophical orientation
• 3 Animals and animal products trafficked to Norway
• 4 Court cases exemplifying the variations of wildlife trade and animal abuse
• 5 Trafficking within Norway and from Norway to other countries
• 6 The enforcement of CITES in Norway from the perspective of CITES control agencies
• 7 The keeping of exotic reptiles in Norway
• 8 Summary of the Norwegian case study
• 9 Wildlife trafficking in Colombia
• 10 The animal victims in Colombia and how they are abused
• 11 Responses to wildlife trafficking by the Colombian authorities
• 12 How to respond to the harms of wildlife trafficking
• 13 Animal victimization in Norway and Colombia
• 14 Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the wildest of them all?
• References
• Appendix 1: seizure reports from Norwegian Customs
• Appendix 2: Colombian legislation concerning wildlife trafficking
• Index