Animal trafficking

Have you heard of animal trafficking? I’m guessing   many people have heard of human trafficking but not animal trafficking. But before we go deep into this topic, you may have seen I have not been publishing blogs for quite a long time, so let me explain why. We went to Kolkata and we couldn’t bring our computer that does the editing and publishing but I bought a laptop from my home. So I could write the blogs but not publish them. So that’s why I couldn’t publish blogs at that time. We are sorry for any inconvenience we might have caused. Okay, now let’s go back to the topic. So, animal trafficking is just as big, if not bigger than human trafficking. That might be a possibility because animal trafficking is hard to stop. After all, these countries governments don’t prioritize it as human trafficking. You can also call animal trafficking Wildlife Trade. Wildlife or parts of wildlife are usually smuggled through airports and train stations. But how do they get past the security checks? Well, let’s see how they get through the security checks. Well, there are many ways to do that. For example, sometimes the traffickers wear special shirts and they put bird eggs in their pockets. Also, wildlife is sometimes trafficked through luggage and trade. One time, a box with stones on it was found to contain 300 species of endangered turtles. Another example is a woman traveling to Iran with a drugged baby tiger. But sometimes the quantity of wildlife smuggled can be bigger in luggage. A 32-kilogram suitcase seized in Russia was found to contain gibbons, a wild cat, snakes, lizards, turtles, and 2 crocodiles. Unfortunately, the crocodiles did not survive the journey. In another incident, 15 travelers were arrested after they were caught carrying 790kg of Ivory. Also, in Thailand airport officials found 2 tons of Ivory were found in a package labeled as mobile phones. And these traffickings I’ve talked about are not even 1% of animals and/or animal parts that have been trafficked. Also, the animal trafficking industry is worth over 30 billion dollars! In fact the animal that is trafficked the most are cheetahs. This is a huge problem; some animal species even go extinct because of animal trafficking, but the good news is we can fix it. Here are some ways we can stop animal trafficking:

1.      Educate people about animal trafficking.

2.      If you think wildlife or wildlife parts are being smuggled then immediately tell the authorities. Don’t try to handle the animals unless necessary. Wear protective gear like gloves to make sure you don’t harm the animal or animals in any way.

3.      Support countries and organizations that are fighting against animal trafficking.

4.      Make airport and train security systems stronger so that they can detect wildlife or parts of wildlife being smuggled.

5.      Put more species into extremely high protection from poachers.

And there are also more ways to stop animal trafficking if we all continue to fight back against animal trafficking then one day and I am confident about this, we will succeed and save millions if not billions of innocent lives.