Illegal Wildlife Trade: The Fourth Most Lucrative in the World

By: Daniela Silva

Behind a booming black market, drug trafficking, and the horrors of human trafficking the Illegal wildlife trade has become the fourth most lucrative trade in the world. There has been a unforeseen rise in poaching in recent years, threatening to diminish all the conservation efforts and successes of previous and future years to come. This being said, the illegal wildlife trade is worth $19 billion dollars and increasing as well as taking the lives of many endangered and critically endangered species. China, a country well known for the mass consumption of endangered species has now made it a criminal offense to eat an endangered species; it is now punishable by 10 years in prison.

Eating endangered animals and a various array of their parts has been believed to have contain various medicinal properties for generations in china; which in turn have been the base for illegal wildlife trade. The rhinoceros in our lifetime may become a thing of our past, simply because its horn is believed to cure cancer, cure hangovers, and used as an aphrodisiac. Despite this, Rhinoceroses aren't the only animal that are susceptible to extreme poaching. Tigers, bantengs, grevy's zebras, sunbears, Chinese alligators, tortoises, and many more are being killed for trade. What will it take to keep endangered species from becoming taxidermied in a national museums years to come?

Conservations and future successes may find themselves facing more difficulties as poachers try and cut corners to attempt to meet the demand for consumers eager for the produce they have been able to have access to for so many generations. Hopefully, China's new law is the change we need to see to help see the end in the poaching and killing of our endangered species.