Reporting on Illegal Wildlife Trade – Story Ideas, Safety Tips and More

Reports on the illegal wildlife trade often focus on ivory poaching, but there’s illicit traffic in thousands of animal and plant species. Above, wild elephants in Uganda’s Kidepo Valley National Park. Photo: Rod Waddington via Flickr Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

Feature: Reporting on Illegal Wildlife Trade – Story Ideas, Safety Tips and More

By Rene Ebersole

Who wouldn’t enjoy writing — and reading — an account of a man with songbirds stashed in his underpants dodging customs agents at the Miami airport? Or a crime scene investigator on the trail of a smuggling ring trafficking millions of dollars in rare millipedes? Or an undercover law enforcement agent dressed as a gorilla to catch illicit ape traders?

The intersection of crime and wildlife makes gripping reading. It inspires films like “The Orchid Thief,” “Tiger King” and “The Cove.”

But it’s also serious business: The illegal wildlife trade is damaging global biodiversity at a time when more than a million plant and animal species are on the brink of extinction. It is also increasing the risk of pathogens like bird flu, mpox, Ebola and coronaviruses jumping from animals to humans and spreading globally.

 

The illegal wildlife trade is often said

to be on par with drugs, guns and

human trafficking, and frequently

involves the same crime syndicates.

 

The illegal wildlife trade is in fact a billion-dollar business, often said to be on par with drugs, guns and human trafficking, and frequently involves the same crime syndicates.

Since it’s a global problem, there are endless opportunities for journalists to provide coverage — and to work collaboratively with newsrooms in other countries.

Many stories have focused on elephant and rhino poaching for the ivory trade, big cats and pangolins, but there is an illicit trade in practically every animal and plant you can think of — approximately 6,000 species have been captured in law enforcement seizures, according to a report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

 

From high-end handbags to smuggled songbirds

I started covering the illegal wildlife trade some 20 years ago when I accompanied an undercover forensic herpetologist shopping for handbags made from endangered caimans at high-end women’s clothing stores on New York’s Fifth Avenue.

Hummingbird heads fashioned into a pair of late 19th-century earrings. Photo: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (CC0 1.0 Universal).

Soon I was writing about jaguar poaching in Belize, the pet trade in Africa and songbirds smuggled into the United States from Cuba. 

In the past decade, I’ve traveled to five continents on assignment for National Geographic and Audubon to write investigative stories about the illegal wildlife trade. 

I’ve gone behind the scenes of Central Africa’s bushmeat trade, investigated why thieves steal honeybee hives in California, revealed why the state of Florida set up a fake alligator farm to catch poachers and exposed why you might not be getting the salmon you paid for.

In early 2024, I learned that National Geographic was laying off the last members of its investigative journalism team, Wildlife Watch. I and former National Geographic editors Oliver Payne and Rachael Bale responded by co-founding a new nonprofit journalism endeavor called Wildlife Investigative Reporters & Editors.

With WIRE, we aim to produce big investigative environmental journalism projects in partnership with a variety of mainstream media outlets, including a story from Africa now underway with Rolling Stone.

One of our long-term goals is to start commissioning freelance pieces. We’re not ready for that part yet, but in the meantime, I’d like to share some resources available for journalists wanting to do deep reporting about the illegal wildlife trade and give a little advice about how to protect yourself if you’re a freelancer covering these sorts of stories.

 

Expert guidance

First and foremost is the excellent guide to covering wildlife trafficking published in 2021 by the Global Investigative Journalism Network.

This nine-chapter online handbook, written by GIJN’s resource center senior adviser Toby McIntosh, provides tips for researching topics, using social media as an investigative tool, following illicit trade routes, tapping into animal seizure data and much more.

A good place to start is with this highlights page.

Also be sure to check out the spreadsheet of resources, including key organizations, significant reports, helpful databases and examples of noteworthy investigative journalism.

 

Ideas and inspiration

If you’re looking for a story idea, I recommend starting with a narrow search. Pick a region or a particular animal.

One time I Googled “chimp for sale,” and the next thing I knew, I was down a rabbit hole exploring why and how the black market for wildlife has moved online in recent years, making it easier than ever for buyers and sellers to connect on social media sites, closed chat groups and encrypted messaging platforms.

During the pandemic, when many of us were buying more canned tuna than we have in decades, I found a story about how the tuna industry is swimming in a sea of controversy and class action lawsuits raising questions about how dolphin-safe canned tuna is, really.

A Google news alert for “bird smuggling” that I’d set up produced a press release one day about the indictment of a Mexican man trafficking dead hummingbirds for love charms, a trade so mysterious that federal agents knew nothing about it until they intercepted a box full of tiny feathered cadavers.

In addition to uncovering corruption and criminal networks, journalists can do reality checks on claims about the healing properties of products derived from endangered animal parts and plants.

They can also examine weaknesses in supply chains that facilitate ubiquitous crimes such as seafood fraud. They can examine how socioeconomic factors figure into the illicit trade. And they can scrutinize user activity relating to selling wildlife and animal parts on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

 

Risk reduction

When you’re considering embarking on a wildlife trade story, review the Society of Professional Journalists’ code of ethics, giving advice on when undercover reporting is appropriate, if at all.

Search for sources who are investigating the illegal wildlife trade and follow their work, providing not only an experienced guide through a mysterious landscape but also, perhaps, a good protagonist for your story (if they want to be identified).

 

Be careful to protect your sources

from harm. Remember: The people

trafficking wildlife are sometimes

also involved in other illegal activities.

 

Be careful to protect your sources from harm. Remember: The people trafficking wildlife are sometimes also involved in other illegal activities, including money laundering, racketeering and dealing in drugs and arms.

Consider your own safety too. Freelance investigative environmental journalism can involve risk — both legal and personal.

It may be advisable to purchase insurance. First, study up on indemnity clauses and media insurance and find out if you have any coverage under your publisher’s plan. If not, you may be able to negotiate better coverage or perhaps buy your own.

A Culture Of Safety Alliance provides an excellent list of key safety principles for journalists who may face dangerous situations on field assignments, whether they’re working in combat zones, remote rainforests or fishing vessels on the high seas.

For a recent trip to a remote and notoriously dangerous area in Africa, I worked with a safety and security adviser to review the itinerary and connect with regional safety officers, and I made a plan for daily check-ins with my editor via satellite phone.

One basic but essential step was signing up for the Smart Traveler Enrollment Plan, which allows U.S. travelers to register their trips abroad so the Department of State can accurately and quickly locate them in case of an emergency.

Another important measure was creating an emergency document with contact information for every team member in every possible scenario. We never needed to use any of it, nor the Global Rescue insurance I’d bought, but it was reassuring to know that we were prepared.

 

Where to find funding

And finally, there’s the question of funding this kind of investigative work.

The number of outlets willing to pay for writers’ travel expenses is shrinking, but there are resources for reporters covering these subjects, including reporting grants and fellowships from the Pulitzer Center and Journalismfund Europe. For a comprehensive overview of such opportunities, see the Society of Environmental Journalists’ list of non-SEJ environmental journalism awards and grants.

[Editor’s Note: Be sure to check out top biodiversity stories from SEJournal on our Topic on the Beat page. And if you’re still curious about the stories mentioned in this column’s opening, follow these links to read about a man with songbirds stashed in his underpants dodging customs agents at the Miami airport, a crime scene investigator on the trail of a smuggling ring trafficking in rare millipedes and an undercover law enforcement agent dressed as a gorilla to catch illicit ape traders.]

Rene Ebersole is a National Magazine Award-winning journalist and co-founder of Wildlife Investigative Reporters & Editors, a new journalism nonprofit. Her work can be found in Rolling Stone, National Geographic, The Washington Post, The Marshall Project, Mother Jones, Outside, AARP magazine, Undark and Audubon, where she was an editor for more than a decade.

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* From the weekly news magazine SEJournal Online, Vol. 9, No. 44. Content from each new issue of SEJournal Online is available to the public via the SEJournal Online main page. Subscribe to the e-newsletter here. And see past issues of the SEJournal archived here.