Wildlife Trade

What we are doing

WWF plays an important role in fighting illegal trade, most significantly through TRAFFIC – the world’s largest wildlife trade monitoring network. Founded in 1976 by WWF and IUCN (The World Conservation Union), TRAFFIC operates a world-wide network of 25 offices. It conducts pioneering work on species in trade, policy impacts and market dynamics to ensure that the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES, is effective in regulating and protecting animals and plants sold in the international market place.
TRAFFIC North America (NA) works through its offices in the United States, Canada and Mexico, engaging a wide range of stakeholders and decision makers in targeted actions and strategies designed to minimize and eventually eliminate the illegal trade in wildlife species, particularly in tigers, elephants, rhinos and apes. TRAFFIC NA communicates critical information on wildlife trade to diverse audiences including academia, governments, and the general public via key fora and international media coverage.

Through its on-the-ground activities; provision of intelligence to enforcement agencies; educational efforts; local, national, and international policy work; and attention to the business of Internet trafficking, TRAFFIC NA creates a framework for stronger protections for threatened and endangered species around the world.

Cracking the Wildlife Trade Crime 

Traffic NA are focusing on three objectives to combat illegal wildlife trade:

Objective 1 - Reduce the impacts of wildlife trade on native North American and exotic species caused by North American consumption, by monitoring trade, warning of trade problems, and supporting policy and enforcement efforts.
Objective 2 - Reduce illegal and unsustainable trade in tigers and leopards in Asia for use in fur and traditional medicine trade, in elephants for their ivory, and in great apes for bushmeat and pets/zoos through supporting and initiating programs to investigate trade, raise capacity to enforce laws, improve policies, and gain the interest of the United States government to leverage influence internationally.
Objective 3 - Support initiatives to regulate wildlife trade in the priority places of Mexico, Southeast Asia, China, India, and Nepal, and via the Internet, to protect threatened species by law enforcement capacity building, awareness raising, field investigations, political engagement, and policy development.

TRAFFIC Network

The objectives of the North America team support the TRAFFIC networks global focus of activity:

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  Early warning - TRAFFIC aims to obtain information on emerging or newly discovered trade-related threats to wildlife in order to catalyse appropriate responses to them.
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  Flagship species in trade - TRAFFIC aims to make emergency interventions for selected species threatened by trade. Flagship species are selected as ambassadors for wider trade and conservation challenges. These species include elephants, tiger and other asian big cats, rhinoceroses, great apes, vicuna, marine turtles, sturgeon and mahogany.
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  Resource security - TRAFFIC aims to support trade measures that help improve the security of key wildlife resources such as timber, marine fisheries, traditional Asian medicines, medicinal plants, wild meat and trophy hunting.
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  Wildlife trade hotspots - - TRAFFIC works in priority trade centers to have the largest impact in reducing trade threats to species, resources and ecoregions.