User:Rhin0771/Traffic (conservation programme)

TRAFFIC (Conservation Program)
TRAFFIC (Trade Records Analysis of Flora and Fauna in Commerce), the Wildlife Trade Monitoring Network, is a global non-governmental organization monitoring the trade in wild plants and animals. TRAFFIC focuses on preserving biodiversity and sustainable legal wildlife trade while working against unsustainable illegal wildlife trade. It was originally created in 1976 as a specialist group of the Species Survival Commission of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and evolved into a strategic alliance of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the IUCN.

1990s
TRAFFIC established 13 more offices worldwide in countries such as Europe (1990), East/Southern Africa (1991), and East Asia (1994). The organization looked into trade issues including tiger, agarwood, and rhino, leading to the establishment of The Bad Ivory Database System (BIDS) which became the foundation for the highly important ETIS (Elephant Trade Information System). TRAFFIC's first major work in Africa looked into the decline of black rhinos, which assessed the future for rhinos against serious threats from poaching and continued horn trafficking. In the first global attempt to keep track of all the rhino horn in circulation, TRAFFIC established the Rhino Horn and Product Database. It provided a valuable source of information for government and private sources to regulate rhino horn trade and has been expanded to include data from 54 countries.

TRAFFIC turned its attention to medicinal plants and performed surveys to assess the impact of plant trade in Europe on wild plant populations in 1993. The organization hosted a symposium on medicinal plants later in the decade, which was attended by more than 120 plant specialists, government and industry representatives.

2000s
The following decade saw increasing collaboration and multifaceted ways to improve enforcement and tackle wildlife crime. In 2005, TRAFFIC supported the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in their creation of Wildlife Enforcement network (ASEAN-WEN).

TRAFFIC branched out into what it now refers to as the "green stream", promoting sustainable wildlife trade rather than tackling unsustainable trade. In 2007, TRAFFIC, the WWF, IUCN, and BfN launched the International Standard for Sustainable Wild Collection of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (ISSC-MAP) for sustainable wild collection of medicinal and aromatic plants.

2010s
TRAFFIC began to incorporate more social and economic responsibility into its work, empowering communities whilst promoting sustainable wildlife trade. In 2011 a project was launched working with groups of indigenous women in the Amazon to promote sustainable trade and provide alternative sources of income to the unsustainable harvest of wildmeat. A partnership was set up between TRAFFIC, the Association of the Waorani Women of the Ecuadorian Amazon, and a high-quality chocolate company, WAO Chocolate to fulfil this purpose and won a UNDP award in June 2014.

Post 2010, TRAFFIC began to embrace the field of making wildlife trade sustainable through behavioral change. In 2014, TRAFFIC helped launch the Chi Initiative in Vietnam, one of the biggest consumers of rhino horn products, to preserve declining rhino populations.

Bad Ivory Database (BIDS) and Elephant Trade Information System (ETIS), 1992
The Elephant Trade Information system (ETIS) is an information system that tracks illegal trade in ivory and other elephant products. Managed by TRAFFIC on behalf of CITES, it contained nearly 20,000 records from around 100 countries by 2014. ETIS originated from TRAFFIC's BIDS, set up in 1992 to keep track of law enforcement records from ivory seizures or confiscations around the world since 1989.

EU-TWIX, 2005
TRAFFIC, the Belgian Federal Police, Belgian Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora Management Authority (CITES MA), and Belgian Customs set up and maintain a wildlife database and information exchange platform known as the EU Trade in Wildlife Information Exchange (EU-TWIX). Operational by 2005, it centralizes data on seizures submitted by EU enforcement agencies, by 2010 holding over 31,000 seizure records and having an active membership of over 500 law enforcement officers from all EU member states.

Current Programs Since 2017
TRAFFIC implemented the USAID funded Wildlife-TRAPS project that operates in Africa and Asia to combat illegal trade between the two continents.

TRAFFIC provided training modules through the ROUTES Partnership.

Drafting EU wildlife regulations
In 1992, TRAFFIC published "The wild plant trade in Europe: Results of a survey of European nurseries", a major study on plant trade which recommended harmonizing legislation within the EU. TRAFFIC used the study to initiate a project with the WWF the following year to work on improving EU wildlife trade regulations, and the new regulations they drafted took effect in 1997.

UN Resolution on Protecting Wildlife
In 2012, TRAFFIC and the WWF launched a joint global campaign encouraging governments to combat illegal wildlife trade and reduce demand for illicit endangered species products. The campaign's momentum led to the unprecedented success of the first UN resolution on wildlife crime in 2015.

Standard for Sustainable Wild Collection of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (ISSC-MAP), 2007
Since prehistoric times the majority of the human population has relied on between 50,000 and 70,000 wild plants for traditional medicine. Most medicinal plants are still collected from the wild rather than captive grown in present day. Given the rapidly declining state of biodiversity around the globe due to an array of issues including overexploitation and habitat loss, the wild collection of medicinal plants is not helping the crisis. WHO (World Health Organization), WWF, IUCN, and TRAFFIC all worked together in order to create an international wild plant collection standard for governments and businesses worldwide.

Bushmeat, 2000
TRAFFIC drew attention to the unsustainable use of bushmeat in its 2000 study "Food For Thought: the utilization of wild meat in eastern and southern Africa". Its findings, including the fact that the previously taboo species of zebra was being increasingly harvested, led to widespread publicity including an IUCN report on the subject.

What Is It and How Does It Work?
Wildlife Trafficking is an international organized crime involving the poaching and smuggling of live endangered wildlife or wildlife products to buyers around the globe. It is an industry that has grown over the years and brings in about 20 billion dollars annually. Originally wildlife trafficking was done by opportunists as a way to feed their families, but has now evolved into something more complex, organized, and corrupt. There are only three other trafficking rings that rank above illegal wildlife trade, those being drugs, humans, and weapons. Frequently, wildlife trafficking is linked with the movement of drugs and firearms and might even act as a means of funding said illegal operations.

The entire complex trafficking system starts out with a poacher either killing an animal for its products or capturing it to be traded live. Poachers are usually local people living near the wildlife that is being poached, trying to sustain themselves and their families. The poached animal or product then goes through a series of two middlemen, the first buying from the poacher and selling to the second middleman. The second middleman, also known as the exporter, then sells the poached product to the buyer. Buyers are usually members of the rich upper class and from a different country than the origin of the poached product.

Wildlife trafficking is a jumble of organized, unorganized, and corporate crime which makes it hard to pinpoint the problem areas and work towards solutions. The demand for poached products stems from various long standing cultural medicines where the ingredients include things like elephant tusks, rhino horn, or sun bear gallbladders. These medicines are said to be the remedy for an array of health problems spanning from nervousness all the way to cancer but are not scientifically proven to work. The demand not only lies with the production of cultural medicine, but with the status of being able to afford these cultural medicines and their implications of wealth. Other products of wildlife trafficking such as fur coats, jewelry, and the exotic pet trade serve as status enforcers for the wealthy as well. The complexity of illegal wildlife trade is what makes it necessary to address it with cross-disciplinary collaboration. Wildlife trafficking mixes culture, crime, conservation, politics, economics, and societal standings together to form one broad widespread issue.

Environmental Risks
Key environmental concerns of wildlife trafficking pertain to biodiversity loss and the attributed consequences on endangered species. Wildlife trafficking is removing key parts of ecosystems in large quantities including predator and prey animals in conjunction with essential plants such as rosewood that make up habitats. Doing so disrupts ecosystem balance, making it harder for targeted endangered species involved in trafficking to be restored. Especially since deforestation has its own set of pressures on the environment added on top of the wildlife trafficking taking place.

Human Risks
Other risks include economy, national security, and social stability. People who rely on the environment to make their honest living are suffering greatly in being able to make a living and support their families since the environmental impacts of wildlife trafficking are imposed on their local areas, setting the stage for the economic problems wildlife trafficking poses. National security risks include biosecurity threats. Biosecurity risks are becoming a more pressing concern with zoonotic diseases in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. Covid-19 is believed to have direct relation with wildlife trafficking since it originated in a wet market in China. Throughout history several zoonotic pathogens have wreaked havoc on human populations, but there is a fear that with the recent increase in illegal wildlife trade and contact with wild animals that global pandemics will become more frequent. Social stability is addressed under community impacts.

Community Impacts
Wildlife trade not only affects humans on a global scale but on a local scale as well. Poachers are usually men trying to support their families. Specifically in Africa, families are heavily intertwined with the community and differ from western societies in the way that the whole community is viewed as a large family and is heavily reliant on each other to live. Organized crime is brought into these communities by high level traffickers when they are looking for potential poachers to do their dirty work. Social stability is threatened in these instances due to the severity of the crime and the danger it brings. People in these communities are threatened with their lives to keep quiet, making fear an everyday obstacle within the community. Many wives end up widowed with fatherless children due to their poacher husbands being arrested or killed. Since men are usually supporting these families financially, poverty and food security becomes an issue in the absence of husbands’ weather they are poachers or not. Some wives of imprisoned poachers in Zimbabwe along with other women that have been abandoned or assaulted in some ways have formed an all-female anti-poaching patrol group called Akashinga. Another all-female unit in South Africa, similar to Akashinga has formed called the Black Mambas.