The Brazilian Amazon is hemorrhaging illegally traded wildlife according to a new report released Monday. Each year, thousands of silver-voiced saffron finches and other songbirds, along with rare macaws and parrots, are captured, trafficked and sold as pets. Some are auctioned as future contestants in songbird contests. Others are exported around the globe.
Fish bound for ornamental home aquariums also pour out of the Amazon, including the tiny, iridescent blue and red cardinal tetra. Arapaima fish also known as pirarucù, one of the world’s largest freshwater fish are caught illegally, laundered amidst captive-bred specimens and shipped to the U.S. in large numbers.
Other fish are headed for the dinner table, as are freshwater turtles and their eggs, while tapir, peccary and other mammals are sold in Brazil as bushmeat. Jaguar teeth, heads and skins are shipped to China.
Millions of animals are being illegally captured and traded live and in parts in a thriving Brazilian black market, according to the report, produced by TRAFFIC, a UK-based nonprofit that studies the trade. The pervasive and uncontrolled capture of wild animals and plants for the illegal trade is having grave consequences for Brazilian biodiversity, the national economy, the rule of law and good governance, it says.
Deep-dive research by biodiversity consultant Sandra Charity who wrote the 140-page study with Juliana Ferreira, executive director of the nonprofit conservation group Freeland Brasil focused on Amazon rainforest species and closely investigated the domestic bird trade.
Importantly, the researchers found that an ever-increasing segment of the illegal trade launders poached animals via a sprawling, legal captive breeding industry a network that specializes in birds, which have a huge domestic market in Brazil.
The authors also discovered that few government agencies have kept records or reported solid data that quantify the true scope of the problem. In many cases, records did not even identify the species or number of animals seized by authorities, while data coming from the Amazon was notoriously scarce.
Significant seizures are made on a daily basis by Amazon state law enforcement, and we did not have access to their data, Ferreria said, adding, from what we saw, [the illegal trade] is even bigger than we imagined.
Trends remain difficult to track, however, since seizure data alone represents a mere fraction of animals illegally pulled from the wild. But it is clear from existing data that there is an uptick in smuggling of some species, including jaguars: seizures increased by 200% from 2012 to 2018.
The lack of comprehensive data, the report notes, tends to play down the importance, as well as concealing the severity, of Brazilian trafficking undermining enforcement efforts, legal attention and the funding needed to fight it.
But the study warns that the illegal trade is having serious consequences not only for the animals seized, but for entire species, ecosystems and people, not just in the Amazon but around the globe. The current COVID-19 epidemic, for example, caused by a coronavirus that jumped from wildlife to humans, has reminded the world that trafficking in wild animals is not merely a conservation issue, says Ferreira. It’s both a public health issue and a biosafety issue.
An overarching national strategy is needed now to deal effectively with the problem, said the research team.
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