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Wildlife Trafficking in Motion

Licit transportation networks can be used for illicit means, including to facilitate wildlife trafficking. A multitude of transport sectors, such as air, land, mail, and sea, are vulnerable to exploitation by wildlife traffickers. Seizures associated with these four aforementioned transport types can be further defined as:

Air – Seizures made at airports or affiliated cargo warehouses, encompassing both passenger-carried wildlife shipments and shipments via air freight services.
Land – Seizures made at inland locations, outside of logistics hubs (like airports, maritime ports, and mail processing facilities); land seizures may take place in homes, in company warehouses, on roads, or at land border crossings.
Mail – Seizures made at a postal and/or parcel processing facility or customs inspection point, encompassing both personal shipments of any size and commercial shipments via package delivery or courier service.
Sea – Seizures made at a maritime port, an affiliated cargo warehouse, a customs inspection point, or from boats along various bodies of water, including seizures of shipments carried by vessel passengers or crewmembers and containerized shipments on cargo ships.
Proportion of Seizures by Transport Type
Air
Land
Mail
Sea
Unknown

Number of Seizures vs. Number of Country-Linked Seizures

A seizure count is the number of interdictions of wildlife or wildlife products in a given location, whereas a country-linked seizure count refers to the number of incidents of wildlife trafficking that originated, transited, or were destined for a specific country, regardless of whether or not the incident of wildlife trafficking was interdicted in that country. The county-linked seizure count of a country is therefore always equal to or greater than the seizure count of the same country.

For example, if a shipment of rhino horn originating in South Africa and destined for Vietnam is seized in transit at an airport in Turkey, Turkey would have a count of 1 for seizures and 1 for country-linked seizures; South Africa would have a count of 0 for seizures and 1 for country-linked seizures, and Vietnam would have a count of 0 for seizures and 1 for country-linked seizure.

Instances of a wildlife trafficking shipment passing through a country without being seized are considered “missed” seizure opportunities. Furthermore, in instances where a wildlife trafficking shipment is seized prior to reaching its intended destination, the destination country would be considered as having had “no opportunity” to seize the shipment. Therefore, in the prior example South Africa would be considered as having “missed” the seizure and Vietnam would be considered as having had “no opportunity” to interdict the shipment.

Between undefined and undefined, there was in seizures of wildlife product transported by air, land, mail, and sea globally.
Number of Seizures by Transport Type
Ivory
Leopard
Lion
Pangolin
Rhino Horn
Tiger

Transport Type and Weight

The weight of a wildlife shipment can also be a factor in determining which transport type is utilized by traffickers. For instance, large quantities of wildlife product may be more effectively conveyed in shipping containers as sea cargo, as opposed to being moved piecemeal in passenger luggage on commercial airlines. However, the larger the weight of a shipment, the more complex are the logistics and the higher the loss for trafficking networks if the shipment is seized.

air, land, mail, and sea seizures accounted for NaN% of wildlife product seizures globally between undefined and undefined, but NaN% of product weight seized.
Total Weight Seized by Transport Type
Air
Land
Mail
Sea
Unknown
The graph below displays the total weight of wildlife seizures by four common transportation types: air, sea, land, and mail. The size of the bubble around these points indicates the average weight of wildlife seizures by that transport method. To adjust the time period covered by this graph, select a start and end date in the “date” filter.
Average Weight Seized by Transport Type
In contrast to the graph above, which shows the total weight of wildlife seizures by transport type, the table below delineates the average weight of wildlife seizures by both species and transport type.