Holistic management of live animals confiscated from illegal wildlife trade

The illegal wildlife trade is one of the most pressing environmental issues globally and a substantial contributor to the Anthropocene extinction crisis (Nijman 2010). In response, combating wildlife trade has attracted considerable global political support and, between 2010 and 2016, approximately U.S. $1·3 billion in donor and governmental funding (Wright et al. 2016). Much of this momentum has focused on iconic megafauna – rhinoceros Rhinocerotidae, elephant Elephantidae and tiger Panthera tigris – and the transcontinental trade between Africa and Asia (Wright et al. 2016). However, the majority of species and individual animals traded illegally are not high priority flagships but a vast array of species traded both internationally and domestically and with uses as varied as medicine, pets and food (UNODC 2016). The World Wildlife Seizure database (World WISE), of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), highlights the breadth of the illegal trade listing, from between 2004 and 2015, more than 164 000 seizures from 120 countries of more than 7000 species (UNODC 2016). Similarly, a recent analysis of live seizures of species listed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) documented more than 64 000 animals, from 359 species, seized between 2010 and 2014 (D'Cruze & MacDonald 2016). The global community has acknowledged that responses to illegal wildlife trade need to be multifaceted and holistic with, for example, an increasing recognition of the role of both engaging local communities and targeted evidence-based behaviour change communication (Challender & MacMillan 2014; Biggs et al. 2016). We suggest that a similarly comprehensive and holistic conservation-oriented approach is required to deal with live animals confiscated from the illegal wildlife trade as a result of law enforcement. The inability to effectively address this issue may create conservation, ethical, animal rights and resource issues (D'Cruze & MacDonald 2016; Zhou et al. 2016). And is an often overlooked aspect of the global response to illegal wildlife trade potentially undermining otherwise successful initiatives. In this Practitioner's Perspective, we provide some applied solutions to this important conservation issue, and identify outstanding research needs, based on more than 15 years' experience of the Wildlife Rapid Rescue Team (WRRT) in Cambodia. Dealing with the illegal wildlife trade is particularly pertinent in countries, such as Cambodia, which are source, transit and destinations for illegally traded wildlife products (Table 1). The problem is compounded by pervasive corruption, Cambodia is ranked 156th out of 176 countries globally by Transparency International (Transparency International 2016), combined with limited governmental and civil society capacity and funding for tackling domestic and regional drivers of unsustainable wildlife trade. In Cambodia, as with much of South East Asia, extensive regional trade and domestic consumption, combined with limited effective law enforcement, is driving defaunation and the distinctively Indochinese phenomenon of genuinely empty forests (Harrison et al. 2016). The 2002 Forestry Law of the Ministry of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries governs the hunting, consumption and trade in wildlife in Cambodia. Under the law, it is prohibited to 'transport and trade an amount exceeding that necessary for customary use' any native species of mammal, bird or reptile. The hunting, possessing or trading any of 16 'Endangered' or 76 'Rare' species, defined in a 2007 Ministerial Proclamation, is illegal under any circumstances with mandatory custodial or financial penalties. The WRRT was created by Wildlife Alliance in collaboration with the Royal Government of Cambodia in 2001 in response to the extensive domestic wildlife trade and the opportunities for effective enforcement created by the Forestry Law and Cambodia's earlier ratification of CITES. The WRRT is Cambodia's only wildlife trade enforcement unit with a national mandate and judicial police authority to arrest traffickers and seize smuggled wildlife. The WRRT has a 24/7 confidential public Wildlife Trafficking Hotline and a network of informants which allows the unit to quickly respond to reported cases of wildlife crime. As a result of the action of the WRRT, there has been a clear reduction in the extent of illegal wildlife trade in the country (Martin & Martin 2013; N. Marx, S. Gauntlett, pers. obs.) ,and specialist wildlife markets, openly selling threatened species, are much less ubiquitous than in neighbouring countries such as Thailand, Lao PDR and Myanmar (Nijman & Shepherd 2015a,b). For example, the number of wildlife traders operating in Chi Phat, a known trafficking hotspot in the Cardamom Rainforest Landscape, declined from 10 to 2 individuals between 2005 and 2015 (Wildlife Alliance, unpublished data). However, it quickly became apparent that the success of the WRRT in implementing the Forestry Law resulted in a large number of seizures and confiscations of live animals and the realization of the need for clear protocols for effectively and ethically dealing with confiscated animals (Fig. 1). As an example of the extent of the trade and operations of the WRRT, between 2007 and 2015, a total of 24 963 live animals from 173 species of mammal, bird and reptile were seized. This is in addition to confiscation of dead animals (>26 000 individuals) and wildlife meat (>9500 kg) and body parts (>7500 items). Live individuals from five IUCN Critically Endangered (Sunda pangolin Manis javanica, Siamese crocodile Crocodylus siamensis, southern river terrapin Batagur affinis, white-shouldered ibis Pseudibis davisoni and white-rumped vulture Gyps bengalensis), 17 Endangered, 16 Vulnerable and 13 Near-Threatened species were rescued (Fig. 2). The majority of the species confiscated were IUCN listed as Least Concern (69%) and the majority of live individuals confiscated (65%) were reptiles (Fig. 2). This posed the question of how to deal with the live proceeds from the illegal wildlife trade. Consequently, Wildlife Alliance worked closely with the Royal Government of Cambodia to develop clear operational guidelines for dealing with confiscated and seized wildlife so as to ensure no individuals could be laundered back into illegal trade (Fig. 1). If seized animals appear to be healthy and are known to have been recently caught from the wild, they are 'hard-released' into suitable habitat. A relationship was also established with Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Center, the sole official government wildlife rescue centre in Cambodia, with Wildlife Alliance supporting management and ensuring high-quality animal husbandry, veterinary care, expert training for staff and natural enclosures for animals. However, the commitment to lifetime care to any animals which require it, irrespective of their conservation status, creates both financial and human resource challenges. The annual operating costs of Wildlife Alliance's support to Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Center exceed U.S. $450 000 and additional investment was required to increase local veterinary and animal husbandry capacities. Therefore, such an approach may not be generically suitable globally. There is also a strong focus on conservation reintroductions where appropriate. Leopard cat Prionailurus bengalensis, sambar Rusa unicolor, red muntjac Muntiacus muntjak and golden jackal Canis aureus have been reintroduced in the protected forest surrounding Phnom Tamao and captive-bred binturong Arctictis binturong, among other species, into the Southern Cardamom National Park of the Cardamom Rainforest Landscape (Marx 2008; Marx & Roth 2014). All reintroductions adhere to the guidelines of the IUCN Reintroduction Specialist Group (IUCN SSC 2013). Excitingly, captive-bred Indochinese silvered langur Trachypithecus germaini and pileated gibbon Hylobates pileatus, one of Asia's most charismatic species, have been released, and are breeding, in one of the country's most evocative landscapes, the forests surrounding the world heritage site of Angkor Watt. This represents a rare global example of successful gibbon reintroduction (Osterberg et al. 2015) and places a valid conservation purpose for animals that likely would spend the rest of their lives in a cage. As a multi-agency inter-governmental team with technical oversight provided by an international conservation NGO, opportunities for corruption and mismanagement within the WRRT are limited and this has also contributed to its effectiveness. A major challenge, however, remains the often obsolete classification of species, as 'Endangered', 'Rare' and 'Common' under the Forestry Law. No non-native species are protected, while the 13 mammal species receiving the highest level of protection ('Endangered') include one mythical (khting vor 'Pseudonovibos spiralis'), one globally extinct (kouprey Bos sauveli) and two extirpated species from Cambodia (Javan Rhinoceros Rhinoceros sondaicus and tiger). Of the 47 IUCN Threatened or Near-Threatened mammal species occurring in Cambodia 13, including fishing cat Prionailurus viverrinus, binturong and sambar are classified as 'Common' with their trade and consumption involving minimum penalties. The conservation community, including some of the authors of this paper, is currently engaging with the Royal Government of Cambodia on an extensive and far-sighted modification of the country's environmental legislation (The Natural Resource and Environmental Code) and is recommending revision of the wildlife protection law to align protection of species, including those non-native to Cambodia, with their global IUCN Red List status. While in the last decade significant progress has been made in Cambodia with respect to reducing the open trade in wildlife (e.g. Martin & Martin 2013; N. Marx, S. Gauntlett, pers. obs.) and dealing with confiscated animals, effective prosecution of offenders is lacking behind. Prosecuting and sentencing law breakers not only punishes offenders but it also sends a clear message to society about what is and what is not tolerated, and as such acts as a deterrent to future offenders. Fines, seizure of goods, recouping monetary proceeds of criminal activities and prison sentences all increase the (real or perceived) cost-facing criminals, ideally up to the point where these costs outstrip the (potential) benefits (Nijman 2017). Hitherto many of the confiscations of wildlife do not result in prosecution of those involved in their trade, with the possible exception when high-profile species are involved. And, as elsewhere in South East Asia, the political will for prosecuting environmental lawbreakers has always been lacking. It will require a paradigm shift on part of the judiciary, the line ministries and other government agencies, as well as the general public, to see the illegal wildlife trade as an economic crime rather than a crime committed against an individual animal that is traded. The care and rehabilitation of confiscated live animals is a critical, but often missing, aspect in approaches for disrupting the illegal wildlife trade. The importance of such a comprehensive approach is clear. Law enforcement without care or consideration for seized wildlife is likely to create additional problems and may be as irresponsible as doing nothing. A holistic approach to dealing with live animals confiscated from the illegal wildlife trade, as outlined above, must be considered in conservation planning and high-level inter-governmental dialogues on combating wildlife trafficking. In order to ensure that science-based best practices and knowledge influences such dialogue a number of applied research questions need to be addressed. There is a need to further understand the scale and breadth of the illegal trade in wildlife particularly for species that are not global conservation flagships. This is required to ensure that sufficient funding and technical support can be provided by the global community to the often less developed countries such as Cambodia, which account for a significant proportion of live wildlife seizures. Applied ecological research into the abundance and distribution of trade target taxa and more transparent data on trade numbers at illegal markets and confiscations is required. This will assist in ensuring that conservation funds can be appropriately allocated both geographically and by taxa. There is also a need for improved basic knowledge on species natural history and taxonomy, both areas critically neglected in South East Asia (Koh & Sodhi 2010), in order to fine-tune species wildlife rehabilitation, care and reintroduction. A major challenge requiring targeted research is post-release monitoring of wildlife, particularly 'hard releases' of recently captured animals. There is a need to understand survivorship, and the factors which facilitate it, for adaptive management of future releases. Understanding the extent to which rapidly released animals are able to survive, and fine-tuning release protocols, is likely to reduce pressure on rescue and animal care facilities globally. The global wildlife trade, both legal and illegal, is increasingly acknowledged as having strong consequences for zoonotic disease transmission to both humans and wildlife (Smith et al. 2012). Greater understanding of pathogen pools in healthy wild populations of widely traded species is required for planning responsible releases and reintroductions of individuals confiscated from the illegal wildlife trade. For example, Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Centre currently houses more than 100 seized long-tailed macaque Macaca fascicularis and pig-tailed macaque Macaca nemestrina, a proportion of which carry Herpes 1 and 2 (Wildlife Alliance, unpublished data). Releasing these individuals is not possible without understanding background levels of Herpes and other pathogens, which may be benign, in wild primate populations. Similarly, more than half of confiscated pileated gibbons in Cambodia carry Hepatitis B antigens or antibodies (Wildlife Alliance, unpublished data). Infected individuals are not suitable for release or re-wildling without understanding natural levels of hepatitis in wild gibbon populations and the extent to which this specific strain of hepatitis is unique to gibbons. Such research issues need addressing to help conservation practitioner's implement the full potential of using seized animals for establishing in situ and well-managed conservation breeding programmes for some of the planet's most threatened species. Finally, it is recognized that in order to understand the persistence of the illegal wildlife trade, an untangling of the criminal networks involved is needed. It is difficult to design an effective policy to deal with wildlife crime without having a good knowledge of the networks involved in and driving that crime. These will often be specific to the geographical area and species involved (Ayling 2013). This entanglement then needs to be accompanied by effective law enforcement and prosecution; both areas that need investigating as to why this, by and large, has failed to curb the trade in wildlife in South East Asia and indeed elsewhere. T.G., N.M., V.M. and S.G. wrote the paper; and N.M., K.V., D.L. and S.G. undertook the work described. We thank the Royal Government of Cambodia for supporting the work of the Wildlife Rapid Rescue Team (WRRT) particularly H.E. Chheng Kimsun, Keo Omaliss and Nhek Ratanapich. Amy van Nice, Neil D'Cruze, Monica Zavagli, Chris Shepherd and three anonymous reviewers provided comments which improved the quality of the manuscript. Tun Setha produced the figure. Funding for WRRT operations come from various sources including (in alphabetical order) Anderson-Rogers Foundation, Aspinall Foundation, Barbara Delano Foundation, Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund, Tamaki Foundation, Wallace Research Foundation, USAID and United States Fish and Wildlife Service. Data have not been archived as this paper does not contain data. Thomas Gray is Director of Science for Wildlife Alliance and has undertaken applied conservation research on threatened mammals and birds in Cambodia since 2005. Nick Marx is Wildlife Alliance's Director of Care for Rescued Wildlife at Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Centre and leads the reintroduction of seized wildlife. Khem Vuthravong and Dean Lague manage the multi-agency Wildlife Rapid Rescue Team and have combined more than 50 years practical law enforcement experience. Vincent Nijman, Professor in Anthropology, conducts research on wildlife trade in Asia informing governments, NGOs and industry how to mitigate the adverse effects of unregulated and unsustainable trade on imperilled wildlife. Suwanna Gauntlett is the founder and CEO of Wildlife Alliance and assisted the Forestry Administration in the creation of WRRT in 2001. She has 22 years' experience in wildlife anti-poaching and anti-trafficking law enforcement and park protection.