Out of Africa: How West and Central Africa have become the epicentre of ivory and pangolin scale trafficking to Asia details how endemic corruption, weak or absent rule of law, low levels of development and hotspots of armed conflict have left the region wide open to exploitation by well-organised transnational criminal gangs.
EIA has prepared analysis of the draft revision of China's Wildlife Protection Law, published for public comment in October 2020, along with recommendations for further revisions urgently needed to secure positive changes for threatened wildlife, including tigers, leopards, pangolins, elephants, rhinos and bears.
The world’s eight pangolin species are experiencing catastrophic levels of poaching and trafficking to feed demand for their scales, meat and other body parts. In 2016, the global community agreed to make the international commercial trade in pangolins and their parts and derivatives illegal.
The global illegal wildlife trade (IWT) is now recognised as a serious transnational organised crime. Although there are various estimates of the scale of the crime, the most commonly quoted figure puts the proceeds from IWT in a range of $7-23 billion a year.
EIA research reveals that at least twenty-four Chinese pharmaceutical companies have been listing leopard bones as an ingredient in their traditional medicines, although there are fewer than 450 wild leopards left in that country.