THE
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The Wildlife Justice Commission works to disrupt the criminal networks driving wildlife trafficking, tracing their supply chains, gathering evidence, and helping law enforcement target the people orchestrating these crimes. Disrupting the trade also means reducing the demand that makes it profitable.

Everyone has a role to play. Everyday choices about the animals we interact with and the wildlife content we engage with online can either contribute to demand or help reduce it. This guide provides practical information to help you make informed choices, avoid contributing to the illegal pet trade and reduce demand for illegally sourced wildlife.

Yes. For some species, even relatively small numbers can have a significant impact, particularly when animals are slow to reproduce or are already under pressure from habitat loss and other threats.

When demand remains high, repeated capture can steadily deplete wild populations. For some species, the illegal pet trade has become a serious threat to their survival.

The pet trade becomes illegal when wild animals are captured, possessed, transported or sold in violation of national laws or international regulations. The IUCN Red List assesses the conservation status of species, including those threatened with extinction, while the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) regulates international trade in thousands of wild species and sets out different levels of protection.

Despite these protections, animals can still be taken from the wild, smuggled across borders and sold illegally, sometimes with false or misleading claims about their origin or legal status.

The journey from the wild to a buyer can be brutal. Animals may be captured, confined, transported in unsuitable conditions, and smuggled across borders. Many die before they ever reach their destination.

Those that survive can suffer from injury, stress, malnutrition, and inadequate care. Animals kept as pets can also face a lifetime in conditions that cannot meet their behavioural and environmental needs.

Yes. The illegal pet trade can involve organised criminal networks made up of different actors who perform different roles within the trafficking chain. Animals may be sourced by poachers or collectors, passed to brokers or traders, transported across borders by couriers, and eventually sold to buyers in destination markets. These roles can be spread across multiple countries and coordinated to move animals from the wild into the legal market.

This division of roles, cross-border activity, and coordination allows criminal networks to move and sell large numbers of animals while making it harder for authorities to identify those directing the trade.

Criminal networks exploit demand for rare and exotic animals and can make significant profits by sourcing animals cheaply in their countries of origin and selling them for much higher prices in destination markets.

The more unusual or difficult-to-obtain an animal is, the more desirable it can become to collectors. This creates an incentive for traffickers to target wild populations and find new ways to move animals across borders while avoiding detection.