Welcome

Early this year the Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety (WCS) and Children’s Hos­pi­tal Boston launched the HealthMap-​Wildlife Trade Map. This new dig­i­tal tool is intended to improve mon­i­tor­ing of ille­gal trade in wildlife and the poten­tial dis­ease risks it may present to peo­ple and ani­mals.

Before the Wildlife Trade Map was devel­oped, the main data used for esti­mat­ing the scale and scope of the trade was lim­ited to offi­cial records of inter­cep­tions through CITES (Con­ven­tion on Inter­na­tional Trade in Endan­gered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna) enforce­ment and offi­cial import-​export records, as well as records of con­fis­ca­tions — mainly from offi­cial gov­ern­ment agen­cies.

The Wildlife Trade Map, how­ever, makes it pos­si­ble to aggre­gate the many sources of offi­cial data with addi­tional infor­ma­tion from mul­ti­ple publicly-​available sources, includ­ing news­pa­pers, inter­net, and other pub­licly avail­able media.

The Wildlife Trade Map is a spin-​off from Healthmap that exists since 2006 and has been com­bin­ing offi­cial data with infor­mal real-​time media sto­ries and reports from the pub­lic since 2006. Map­ping these diverse sources of infor­ma­tion has helped the global health com­mu­nity, trav­el­ers and the world at large to know where out­breaks of infec­tious dis­eases are occur­ring. Apply­ing these tools to map the wildlife trade was a novel appli­ca­tion of this tech­nol­ogy.

Nowa­days ille­gal wildlife trade is con­sid­ered organ­ised crime, like the ille­gal weapons trade and drugs trade. The real and global effects of the ille­gal wildlife trade is yet unknown. But it has been recorded that frag­ile ecosys­tems were dis­rupted and that it facil­i­tated the intro­duc­tion and the spread of (novel) infec­tious dis­eases in humans, domes­tic ani­mals, and native wildlife.

The trade that is referred to includes live and dead wildlife of mul­ti­ple species which are cap­tured, poached, and sold for food, med­i­cine, pets and tro­phies. As men­tioned ear­lier the data that exists (CITES and offi­cial import-​export and con­fis­ca­tion data) will cer­tainly under­es­ti­mate the real scope and scale of the global wildlife trade.

Pre­vi­ous stud­ies to mon­i­tor the ille­gal wildlife trade, track­ing Inter­net trade of inva­sive species and wildlife trade mar­ket sur­veys, have had mixed results. The Inter­net mon­i­tor­ing pro­vided excel­lent results, though it only cap­tured Inter­net sales, which may not be rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the greater ille­gal trade pic­ture. On the other hand the mar­ket sur­veys improved esti­ma­tion of a par­tic­u­lar species being ille­gally traded in spe­cific regions or local­i­ties, but it was too resource inten­sive when a wide array of species and regions had to be cov­ered.

So, a com­pre­hen­sive auto­mated, real-​time, dig­i­tal sur­veil­lance sys­tem for aggre­gat­ing, organ­is­ing, and dis­play­ing ille­gal wildlife trade reports from offi­cial and unof­fi­cial sources (e.g. news media), which is lan­guage inde­pen­dent, such as the Wildlife Trade Map would prob­a­bly offer a more com­plete pic­ture of the trade.

A first and promis­ing result of the Wildlife Trade Map mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem has been pub­lished in the open access jour­nal PLoS on Decem­ber 7. Researchers pro­vide find­ings that have been achieved with the Wildlife Trade Map. They com­pare the results with other exist­ing sys­tems, such as the LEMIS tracker and Tiger tracker, both devel­oped by WWF together with TRAF­FIC, and alerts on the ille­gal wildlife trade com­piled by other organ­i­sa­tions such as Save the Ele­phants, Free­land, Lusaka Agree­ment Task Force, Wildlife Direct, ASEAN-​WEN Wildlife Enforce­ment Net­work, Wildlife Alliance, and Inter­pol.