A Tail of Two Trades

Abstract

The goal of this project is to determine the motivations for wildlife traffickers and compare them to the motivations of drug traffickers. To do this I will be interviewing individuals with experience in wildlife trafficking. For safety reasons information about drug trafficking will only come from literary sources. Wildlife trafficking is an understudied illegal trade that has an enormous impact on our planet and humans as a species. For example the current theory of the origin of the Covid-19 virus is that it came from an infected pangolin that was illegally trafficked to China. I expect that the results of this study will show that while the overall goal in both illegal trades is to obtain money, the environments and social situations that lead individuals to these trades will be very different. I have been interviewing individuals with experience in the illegal wildlife trade, from the EATM program at Moor Park College and caretakers of confiscated animals at the STAR Ecostation. I also expect to be interviewing agents from the Department of fish and wildlife as they are the ones who both seize trafficked animals and arrest the traffickers.

Details

Session 1

9:30am – 11:00am

Grand Salon