Summary: The Illegal Wildlife Trade

A rapidly growing trade for the Transnational Organized Crime groups is the illegal wildlife trade. “By its very nature, it is almost impossible to obtain reliable figures for the value of illegal wildlife trade. Experts at TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, estimate that it runs into hundreds of millions of dollars.” (2015). Tigers, Elephants, Rhinos, and even sea creatures like turtles are just a few animals that are being poached for this trade. The elephants for their ivory and Rhinos for their horns, is all that a poacher is after and metric tons of the stuff is being seized. The question to that is, how much is getting through that nobody knows about? Plants, yes plants, and other animals are all being sold for such
things as food, pets, leather, trophies, tourist souvenirs, and medicines.
Many of the rare species being poached by Transnational Organized Crime groups are endanger of being wiped off the face of the planet forever. Government corruption, weak laws, and next to no punishment for poaching allows for these crimes to continue around the world. For Crime groups the risk is low and rewards are high, especially when the poachers are poor locals, which are typically the persons jailed for the offenses. Poachers do many things to an environment when they over harvest plants and animals that can have divesting impacts across that area. The altering of livelihoods of the locals who can depend on the plants and animals poached for their own survival where they live. The poaching can have massive effects on other species that live and breathe in those eco-systems which in turn can have wider effects on nature. The introduction of wildlife into an eco-system can be invasive toward other species. “For example pet Burmese pythons let loose by their owners are now considered a major pest in Florida’s everglades.” (2015). And lastly, the killing of other species, incidentally, while targeting endangered species can affect
those animals too.
Lastly, the theft of intellectual property by Transnational Organized Crime groups has massive profits for them and huge losses for the countries which develop the intellectual property.
This is by no means the last way that these groups make their money. Findings from research shows that, “the involvement of organized crime and terrorist groups in counterfeiting products ranging from watches to automobile parts, from pharmaceuticals to computer software. It presents detailed case studies from around the globe in one area of counterfeiting, film piracy, to illustrate the broader problem of criminal — and perhaps terrorist — groups finding a new and not-much-discussed way of funding their activities. Piracy is high in payoff and low in risk, often taking place under the radar of law enforcement.” (Treverton & Matthies & Cunningham & Goulka & Ridgeway &Wong, 2009). This is a massive problem across the globe. It is nearly impossible to account for law enforcement and government officials to calculate an actual amount of revenue lost to the creators of all the different products that our counterfeited or pirated. A military course called, Dynamics in Terrorism, put on by Air Force Special Operations Command, that I attended, had a guest speaker that spoke about how terrorist organizations used “free-downloads” of movies as a way to produce large amounts of funds. Somehow their “free” movies or websites end up making large amounts of revenue for them to continue with their
activities. This is just one of many forms of intellectual theft that is being used not only by terrorists but Transnational Organized Crime groups. Those counterfeit producers do not have to worry about products like toys and car parts functioning properly. If those items are dangerous for the buyer they will not worry about law suits due to it not being a real brand. The creators of such items must go through safety tests before products can be sold. Counterfeits need not worry about safety or legal processes and this creates dangerous environments for public safety. This drives down the cost of counterfeiting so that crime groups can have higher profits off of counterfeit items. “Because counterfeiters are essentially unaccountable and have no interest in building a brand reputation, costs can be additionally reduced by cutting corners in the production phase, such as employing sweatshop labour, engaging in environmentally unsound manufacturing processes and using inferior-grade materials.” (2010). So basically the next time you would like to be creative and innovate something great, there will be a criminal hidden somewhere that will steal your intellectual property to steal the profit from you. That is scaring people from even trying to be creative which in turn affects the entire globe.