New #WildEye data reveals that Eastern Europe is an important region for wildlife traffickers. And it seems likely that many crimes go unnoticed and unpunished, writes Marius Daea Under siege: Pangolins and their scales are now the world’s most trafficked wildlife products. Photo: Piqsels.com / Public domain Turkish authorities at Istanbul International Airport made an intriguing discovery in November 2019 when they inspected a shipment labelled as furniture, on its way from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Romania. Instead of wooden tables or chairs, they found 1.2 tons of scales stripped from poached pangolins, highly endangered mammals that look a bit like armadillos. A shipment of this size would be worth three million euros in China, where the scales are used in traditional medicine. So why was it heading to Romania? Eastern Europe’s role in global illegal wildlife trade has received little attention. This is in part because of perceptions that trafficking is more of a problem in Western Europe, where many big seizures have been made. But there are also concerns among conservationists that smugglers are avoiding scrutiny by moving wildlife products through Eastern European countries with less stringent law enforcement. Active enforcement: Elephant ivory seized at London’s Heathrow Airport on its way from Nigeria to China. Photo: UK Home Office / Creative Commons To help understand trafficking patterns and trends, South Africa-based Oxpeckers Investigative Environmental Journalism and the Earth Journalism Network developed an online platform called #WildEye, which maps seizures, arrests, prosecutions and convictions related to illegal wildlife trade. The latest data on the platform, to which I have been contributing, reveals that Eastern Europe is an important region for wildlife traffickers. And it seems likely that many crimes go unnoticed and unpunished. One of the main tools for regulating wildlife trade is the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), which bans all trade in certain endangered species and heavily restricts trade in others. Most countries are party to the treaty. Each year EU member states report their CITES-related seizures to a central database. An analysis of the 2018 data, published by the European Commission, revealed that authorities in the EU had seized CITES-listed species more than 6,000 times that year. The smuggled goods they seized included 2,825 pieces of elephant ivory weighing a combined 145kg, as well as 1,135 live birds; 2,311 live reptiles; and thousands of other items derived from wildlife. The report showed that Europe is indeed a major market, transit hub and source region for illegal wildlife products. But 79% of the seizures were made by just five countries in Western Europe — France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain and the Netherlands. While France had the largest number of seizures (1,256), countries in Eastern Europe made hardly any. Slovenia reported nine and Slovakia eight. Bulgaria reported five, and Romania just two. Black market: Each year large numbers of critically endangered glass eels are smuggled from Europe to Asia. The illegal trade is worth millions of euros. Photo: Uwe Kils / Creative Commons There are various possible reasons for the East-West differences. Western Europe has more economic and cultural ties with Africa, the source of most CITES-listed products. It also has many more large airports and seaports with direct links to Africa. Western Europe also has a larger population of people with Asian heritage, some of whom create demand for CITES products, such as medicine made with rhino horns. But it is also possible that the uneven distribution of seizures reflects more active enforcement in Western European countries, and that many cases of illegal wildlife trafficking in Eastern Europe are simply going undetected. The new #WildEye data certainly suggests this. It reveals that very high-value wildlife and wildlife products are travelling through Eastern Europe on their way to more lucrative markets. That shipment of Congolese pangolins bound for Romania was, for example, likely meant to be sent onward to Asia. On the map: More than 100 cases in eight Eastern European countries are now tracked by #WildEye Seizures made by customs officers in other countries confirm that Romania is a source of illegal wildlife products. At the end of 2018 officials in Thailand found 700 kg of critically-endangered European glass eels that had been shipped illegally from Romania on a commercial flight. The eels had a black-market value of more than one million euros. Yet nobody in Romania has been charged or arrested in connection with this crime, and the Romanian Border Police have made no public comment on the case.