Fraud and corruption drive illegal wildlife trade in the Amazon

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In 2017, authorities at the Miami airport inspected a commercial shipment from Europe. Inside a container, they found 21 splash-backed poison frogs (Adelphobates galactonotus), a species known for its vibrant colors and poisonous skin. The species is endemic to the southern tributaries of the Amazon River and highly sought after by private collectors worldwide.

When questioned, the travelers transporting the package promptly presented documentation, including an export permit required to remove, sell or maintain the frogs away from their natural habitat. Wildlife inspectors realized the paperwork was false only because it was issued in Europe and not in Brazil, the frogs’ country of origin.

The case illustrates the challenges of curbing wildlife trafficking from the Amazon Rainforest. A new report by Transparency International Brazil, titled “The Wildlife Laundromat,” has found criminal organizations are using elaborate smuggling techniques, including fraud and corruption. Experts say these tactics are driving the trafficking of millions of live animals, animal parts and wildlife products.

“It’s shocking to see how these criminal organizations are structured,” Dário Cardoso, a wildlife trafficking analyst who co-authored the report, told Mongabay. “You have the typical suspects who collect, transport and trade wildlife. But you also have individuals specialized in falsifying and altering documents that give the entire operation a veil of legality.”

In 2017, authorities in Miami seized an illegal shipment of 21 splash-backed poison frogs endemic to the Amazon Rainforest. Photo by Rich Hoyer/iNaturalist (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Cardoso said these tactics show just how organized these operations have become. While there’s still an active network of small smugglers, more professionalized groups are taking advantage of the legal trade to transport wildlife — from small fish to monkeys — across the border to neighboring countries, and eventually to Europe, China or the United States.

“This is not just about smuggling wildlife in suitcases anymore. It’s about laundering money and laundering the animals themselves to pretend their business is legitimate,” he said.

In Brazil, as in many other countries, the legal trade of some species is allowed based on CITES, the convention on the global trade in wild animals and plants. This international agreement was introduced in 1973 and has since been ratified by 183 countries, including Brazil, and the European Union, known as parties to the convention. In that time, it has also opened the door for falsifying a wide variety of documents to meet CITES requirements.

According to Transparency’s new report, from 2010 to 2022, smugglers in Brazil were caught altering everything from fishing permits to export licenses. They mislabeled species’ names, altered their places of origin, and falsely declared wild-caught animals as being bred in captivity. They also counterfeited bird rings and microchips.

Over the years, IBAMA, the Brazilian environmental protection agency, and the Federal Police have tried to fight back by digitizing forms and permits. But according to police records, even these e-documents are being forged. Part of the problem is the lack of a comprehensive and unified digital system that monitors the transit, sale and apprehension of species leaving the Amazon.

Smugglers aren’t only circumventing the law by falsifying documents; they’re also making more money. “It’s a very profitable tactic,” Cardoso said. “When a monkey is traded with a false receipt, giving the impression that it has been legally obtained, that animal will sell for double the price.”

Macaws rescued by the police in Brazil. The illegal wildlife trade in the Brazilian Amazon has become increasingly organized and sophisticated. Image courtesy of Transparency International Brazil.

Corruption at every level

This type of operation relies on corruption at every step of the way, according to the report. It identifies several instances of bribery along smuggling routes in Brazil — including police officers paid to ignore suspicious cargo, veterinarians paid to issue false reports, and airport employees paid to bypass luggage scanners.

Most concerning, Cardoso said, are instances of public officials facilitating wildlife trafficking. “To have an idea of the extent of this bribery network, just look at the diversity of public agents involved,” he said. “We know of federal inspection agents, state police officers, and politicians who have accepted bribes but were supposed to be working to protect wild animals.”

With so many people to bribe, trafficking organizations require cash — lots of it. This suggests they receive funds from even larger criminal enterprises. “We’ve seen many instances in the Amazon of drug trafficking financing the illegal wildlife trade,” Melina Risso, research director at the Igarapé Institute, an environmental think tank, told Mongabay. “That is very clear regarding ornamental fish taken across the border to Colombia.”

Criminal groups smuggling drugs and wildlife across the Brazilian border likely share more than just resources. “We know these organizations have also been using the same logistics and transportation methods,” Risso said. In 2022, British journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous rights advocate Bruno Pereira were killed in the region while investigating one of these operations involving large-scale illegal fishing.

Although experts say more sophisticated groups are driving species smuggling from the Amazon, it’s difficult to measure the extent of the activity. According to Rencta, a Brazilian network to fight animal trafficking, 38 million specimens are trafficked yearly in Brazil. While this figure may seem high, experts still consider it a very low estimate, and it doesn’t distinguish how many species are coming from the Amazon Rainforest.

Brazilian authorities raid a fair where birds were illegally traded. From 2010 to 2022, smugglers in Brazil were caught altering a wide range of documents, from fishing permits to export licenses. Image courtesy of Transparency International Brazil.

“We have a problem that official numbers are based on apprehensions,” Juliana Machado Ferreira, executive director of the nonprofit organization Freeland Brazil, told Mongabay. “In the Amazon, in particular, it’s very difficult to detect wildlife trafficking. The territory is huge, and it’s very challenging for authorities to travel within the forest, inspect every aircraft and land border.”

What’s more, certain types of species are rarely seized by authorities. “A suitcase stuffed with bags of water containing ornamental fish is much easier to detect than a person carrying reptile eggs strapped to their body,” Ferreira said. “Let alone bushmeat, bird feathers, and jaguar teeth that cross the border completely undetected.”

A good way to start fixing the problem, experts say, would be for Brazilian government agencies to share the information they do have. “Often apprehension data is not shared widely within the government,” Ferreira told Mongabay. “Without consolidated statistics, we’ll never have a true understanding of wildlife trafficking in the Amazon, how it affects biodiversity and other social and economic impacts.”

In the future, she says, there should be a unified national strategy to combat wildlife trafficking in Brazil that involves state governments, the Federal Police, and the ministries of environment, health and education. “Everyone has a different role in combating this crime, and we all have to work together.”

Brazil’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change told Mongabay in a statement it’s working on a national plan to combat illegal wildlife trafficking, one that calls for “greater articulation and coordination between federal agencies responsible for protecting wildlife.” Meanwhile, the ministry has 800 agents from IBAMA working in collaboration with state governments and the Federal Police dedicated to fighting this criminal activity.

This article by Carla Ruas was first published by Mongabay.com on 18 June 2024. Lead Image: The hyacinth macaw, the world’s largest flying parrot, is closer to returning to Brazil’s endangered species list and is frequently targeted by smugglers. Real numbers for the smuggling of species from the Amazon could be much higher than recorded since current data are based only on seizures. Photo courtesy of Giovanna Gomes/Unsplash.