For Wildlife And Timber Trafficking In Containerized Sea Cargo
Red Flag Indicators
Statistics tell us the illegal wildlife trade enables the poaching of an elephant every 30 minutes, an African rhino for its horn every eight hours, that one in five fish is caught illegally, and in certain countries, particularly in Africa and South America, 50-90% of timber is harvested and traded illegally.
These devastating statistics are driven by lucrative illicit profits. We often see value projections of the illegal wildlife trade around US$20 billion per year, but according to World Bank reports, when you also include illegal logging and fishing, this can jump to a staggering US$1-2 trillion.
More than 90 percent of these losses are from ecosystem services that forests, wildlife and coastal resources provide, that are not currently priced by the market, such as carbon storage, biodiversity, water filtration, and flood retention.
