A total of 1,945 illegal-capture and poaching incidents involving 102,577 wild animals in Hispanic America were reported during 2017-22 in a study by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), a nonprofit that promotes wild-animal conservation.

The study, titled Wildlife Crime in Hispanic America, provides the first important baseline of data on illegal exploitation of reptiles, birds, mammals, and amphibians in the region and is intended to help authorities and civil organizations combat this growing market.

The reporting was limited to Spanish-speaking countries in the Americas because Brazil—where IFAW has worked in the past—could not be included due to its large size and the study’s budgetary limitations.

The illegal wildlife trade in Hispanic America plays a major role in the decline of some species, threatening regional biodiversity, according to the study. Experts say trafficking and poaching are even driving some species to extinction. Of the 690 species documented by IFAW, forty are classified as endangered and 13 as “critically endangered” by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Among those documented were jaguars (Panthera onca). A total of 188 jaguars were intercepted in trafficking or poaching incidents from 2017 to 2022, including 21 live jaguars seized by Mexican authorities. Mexico was the worst offender of trafficking and poaching and accounted for 28% of all incidents and 45% of all animals seized or poached, followed by Colombia, Argentina, Peru and Bolivia.

Open-source data

The study drew on media reports during 2017 to 2022 and on other open-source research, including data from nongovernmental groups and academics. Polen Cisneros, IFAW’s program manager for wildlife crime, worked in the field and at the organization’s office in Washington D.C. to compile data for the study. “Often media articles don’t have the beginning, middle and end of an incident, so the data we have is just the tip of the iceberg,” Cisneros says.

The data revealed that the vast majority of the seizures, 92.5%, concerned live animals. Points of local sale include markets, streets, shops and increasingly online sites. This, the study says, underscores the need to “raise awareness and shift consumer behavior away from the desire to own wild animals as pets.”

Cisneros says the analysis revealed Latin America is both a source of supply and demand. Of the animals bound for the Hispanic market, most were earmarked for the growing exotic-pet industry, the rest for meat consumption, medicinal purposes, fashion, or use in rituals.

“Hispanic America is a destination for exotic wildlife from other parts of the world such as Africa,” she notes. “We found evidence that drug traffickers and people in organized crime like to have lions and tigers, for example.”

In the two months leading up to Dec. 7, 2024, 11 big cats were rescued during an outbreak of drug cartel violence in Mexico’s northern state of Sinaloa that left over 400 people dead and drug lords’ homes abandoned.

“Drug traffickers use big cats as trophies,” says an animal-rights activist involved in the rescue of some of these specimens but who prefers to remain anonymous. “But when the drug lords have to go into hiding or get caught in the crossfire, their exotic pets are just abandoned.”

The IFAW study found evidence that those involved in the region’s illegal drug trade and other trafficking are adding wildlife to their portfolio. “We know convergence is happening more and more,” says Cisneros. “We are seeing the same organizations doing different types of crimes. There are examples of wildlife being trafficked alongside drugs and arms.”

Overseas demand

The seizure data also demonstrate Hispanic America’s wildlife is reaching markets in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Among the animals are mud turtles, horned lizards, alligator lizards, poison arrow frogs, Amazon parrots, macaws and certain species of songbirds. Species trafficked abroad are often not on the list of species protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites), the treaty that restricts trade in specimens of selected species. Penalties for smuggling non-Cites-listed species are either nonexistent or significantly lower. IFAW calls on Cites to list more endemic species.

The study found wildlife crime remains “a low-risk, high-profit crime in Hispanic America,” where law enforcement in the areas of wildlife poaching and trafficking are largely reactive and “fail to effectively disrupt and dismantle wildlife crime networks.” Two exceptions cited are Peru, which has adopted an anti-wildlife-trafficking law and Colombia, which conducts proactive wildlife-crime investigations.

Such approaches are promoted in the 2019 Lima Declaration on Illegal Wildlife Trade, a statement adopted by all Hispanic American countries except Cuba and Venezuela. Cisneros recommends harmonization of the region’s trafficking and poaching laws and help from developed nations. “This is not a local issue,” she says. “It is an international problem that requires the support of the international community.”