Every year, as I prepare to write this end-of-year reflection, I find myself returning to the same feeling: deep pride in the impact the Wildlife Justice Commission has achieved, and deep gratitude for all those who stand with us. But this year is different. This year marks our 10th anniversary — a decade since Wildlife Justice was founded at the height of Africa’s poaching crisis with a singular purpose: to disrupt and help dismantle the transnational criminal networks driving species to extinction.
What began as an urgent response to the rapid decimation of elephants, rhinos, pangolins, and countless other species has grown into one of the world’s most effective organisations combatting wildlife crime. Over the past decade, we have helped transform how wildlife trafficking is understood, investigated, and confronted — not as a conservation issue alone, but as a serious organised crime threat.
A decade of transformation: What sets Wildlife Justice apart
While traditional enforcement agencies operate within national boundaries, Wildlife Justice follows criminal networks across borders. Our intelligence-led model gives us the speed and agility required to confront highly adaptive, profit-driven criminal groups.
Over the past decade, we have:
- Deployed investigative teams within 24 hours to emerging hotspots.
- Infiltrated high-level trafficking networks supplying illegal wildlife products globally.
- Supported law enforcement authorities in securing arrests, prosecutions, and convictions that disrupted criminal operations at their core.
- Delivered evidence-based insights that have shaped global policy and strengthened the effective application of international frameworks such as UNTOC, UNCAC, and CITES to tackle wildlife trafficking.
We ensure seizures lead to arrests, and arrests lead to accountability. In a landscape where impunity once reigned, justice now has a foothold.
2025: A breakthrough year with 9 high-level traffickers taken down
As we celebrate a decade of impact, 2025 stands out as one of the most consequential years in our history.
This year alone, Wildlife Justice investigations contributed to 48 arrests, including nine high-level traffickers across multiple continents. Among them was one of the biggest pangolin-scale traffickers ever arrested — a case from Nigeria that reflects years of intelligence collection and deeper penetration into transnational networks.
Our work this year also led to the disruption of 22 trafficking networks, eight of which were severely disrupted, significantly weakening their operations, financial flows, and ability to continue trading.
2025 was equally defining for our growing marine investigations programme . Across multiple jurisdictions, Wildlife Justice supported law enforcement in dismantling networks trafficking shark fins, sea cucumbers, and other marine species. Our collaboration with law enforcement partners resulted in high-impact seizures and the arrests of key actors driving the illegal trade. Several additional major achievements from 2025 cannot yet be disclosed, to protect the integrity of ongoing investigations — but they further reflect the growing impact of our marine investigations.
These are not symbolic operations. Each one disrupts a criminal network and sends a clear message: Wildlife crime now carries severe consequences.
In addition to these operational successes, 2025 also marked:
- 13 convictions in cases supported by Wildlife Justice — 10 in Madagascar and 3 in Nigeria.
- Advancement of global policy efforts by advocating for stronger criminal-justice responses at major international forums including CITES CoP20, UNTOC, the UN Ocean summit, and the UNCAC CoSP.
- The release of Seizure, our award-winning short documentary, offering the public a rare look into our investigative work. The film drew strong global engagement, exceeding 20,000 views on YouTube in its first week following release.
Looking forward: A call to action
Ten years ago, the Wildlife Justice Commission was created to challenge the status quo.
Today, we have a model that we know works. Today, we stand stronger, more experienced, and more determined than ever.
Wildlife trafficking represents an urgent threat to biodiversity. It drives extinction, undermines governance, and empowers transnational criminal networks that often traffic not just wildlife, but also drugs, arms, and people.
The past decade has shown what is possible when expertise, perseverance, political will, and international cooperation converge.
As we enter our second decade, I ask you to continue standing with us — as partners, supporters, and advocates — so that together, we can disrupt criminal networks and save species from extinction.
