Fighting wildlife crime: A decade of impact
In 2015, at the height of Africa’s poaching crisis, the Wildlife Justice Commission set out with an ambitious mission: to disrupt and help dismantle the transnational criminal networks trafficking wildlife, timber, and fish. By collecting evidence and turning it into accountability, Wildlife Justice would stop organised crime from driving species to extinction.
A decade later, Wildlife Justice stands as a leading force in the global fight against wildlife crime. Through intelligence-led investigations, undercover operations, close collaboration with law enforcement, and sustained policy engagement to highlight wildlife crime, we deliver significant and lasting progress in saving endangered species.
Our work ensures that interceptions lead to arrests, prosecutions, and convictions–closing the impunity gap for wildlife traffickers and driving real accountability across borders.
Wildlife Justice was established as a mechanism to hold countries accountable for failing to combat wildlife trafficking. We were founded by Peace Parks Foundation and WWF Netherlands, through the Postcode Lottery’s Dream Fund, to address the shortcomings in efforts to protect endangered species.
At the time, organised criminal networks were driving species to extinction, but enforcement remained weak, fragmented, and under-resourced—largely targeting individual poachers rather than the powerful trafficking networks operating behind them. Despite the dire situation, some countries failed to act; Wildlife Justice was founded to ensure accountability.
Intelligence obtained by Wildlife Justice indicates trafficking in Mozambique has declined since 2022, and global rhino horn seizure data has also shown a significant and consistent decline.
Global rhino horn seizures, 2012-2024
Transporters play a vital role in wildlife trafficking, using their connections with customs authorities, freight forwarders, and shipping and logistics companies to move illicit shipments.
Taking out a transporter causes major disruption to the criminal supply chain, destabilising the entire network. Wildlife Justice’s investigations have led to the arrests of five top-level transporters operating in Nigeria, Mozambique, and Malaysia.
“The Godfather”
Known as “the Godfather”, Teo Boon Ching was one of the world’s biggest wildlife transporters, operating at the nexus of many African and Asian criminal cartels. Wildlife Justice worked with USFWS to investigate Ching, leading to his arrest in 2022 on rhino horn trafficking charges.
The arrest and conviction of Ching caused severe disruption to many global trafficking networks. It remains one of the most impactful results in Wildlife Justice’s 10 years of existence.
Vietnamese criminal networks play a major role in driving the trafficking of wildlife products across the Africa-Asia supply chain. Through 10 years of investigations, Wildlife Justice analysts have mapped an unprecedented intelligence picture of the major Vietnamese networks.
With our law enforcement partners in Mozambique, Nigeria, and South Africa, between 2022 and 2024 we supported the arrests of six top-tier targets across two major Vietnamese criminal networks.
The two-year investigation exposed the dark inner workings of this trade, revealing the widespread corruption of officials at key airports and transport hubs. Ultimately, our findings led law enforcement agencies to target and convict high-level traffickers and disrupt multiple trafficking networks.
Dirty Money
Corruption is one of the biggest challenges for those fighting wildlife crime. It enables the movement of illicit shipments and allows criminal groups to operate with impunity. The Wildlife Justice Commission was among the first organisations to systematically document the role of corruption in enabling wildlife crime.
In December 2018, its landmark report, Operation Dragon, exposed how entrenched corruption at airports and transport hubs facilitated the illegal turtle and tortoise trade across South and Southeast Asia, demonstrating that corruption is not incidental, but embedded within transnational trafficking networks.
In July 2023, Malaysian anti-corruption investigators acting on intelligence provided by Wildlife Justice raided a storeroom in Klang and seized 1.8 tonnes of pangolin scales. 12 suspects were arrested, including three Customs officers who were allegedly working with a criminal gang to re-sell seized wildlife products on the black market.
In a rare example of corrupt actors being held to account, this case disrupted the criminal network and exposed the corrupt methodologies used by the Customs officers. The operation provided a template for Wildlife Justice’s work with anti-corruption officials.
Working with law enforcement authorities, Wildlife Justice developed an unprecedented intelligence picture, mapping the supply chain from source to market. The investigation continues as a joint, multi-agency effort stretching across continents.
In November 2024, 961 animals were repatriated to Madagascar in a rare triumph in the fight against wildlife trafficking.
Driven by our success in combatting wildlife trafficking, in 2022 Wildlife Justice established a new programme investigating the trafficking of high-priority marine species. The goal is to save these species from extinction by applying our proven methodology of intelligence-led investigations to crimes involving the trafficking of marine species.
In four years from 2022 to 2025, Wildlife Justice has built an extensive intelligence picture of the global trafficking in shark fin, sea cucumber, seahorse, and European eel, and achieved our first major arrests and seizures.
These early results are disrupting the sea cucumber and shark fin trafficking superhighway from Latin America to Asia and make clear that the risk calculus for trafficking in protected marine species is changing.
China is one of the main centres of demand for illegal wildlife products and Chinese criminal networks play a major role in driving trafficking across global supply chains. Disrupting the top tier actors of these networks is a key strategy of Wildlife Justice’s investigations.
In August 2024, Wildlife Justice investigators identified a warehouse belonging to a Chinese suspected kingpin operating in Nigeria. Acting on the intelligence, Nigeria Customs Service seized his 7.2-tonne pangolin scale stockpile. It was the largest seizure of its kind globally in more than four years, although the kingpin evaded arrest.
Our international policy work drives global momentum to prevent and combat wildlife trafficking and other environmental crimes. Because these crimes are transnational, they require coordinated action at the multilateral level.
One example is our active contribution to the negotiations of the new Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of the Environment through Criminal Law—the first international treaty focused specifically on addressing environmental crime through criminal law. We helped ensure that stronger protections for wild fauna and flora were included in the text.
Once ratified, this convention will provide a global framework for tackling transnational environmental crime and introduce stronger penalties to deter wildlife crime.
