Brazil's Wildlife Trafficking

“A vicious circle masks Brazil's widespread illegal wildlife trade—a lack of data deprioritises enforcement action on wildlife trafficking, which in turn means there’s less data to collect. Ultimately it’s a Catch 22 that has grave and lasting impacts on local conservation efforts, economies, and the rule of law,” said report author Juliana M. Ferreira. 

Brazil is home to 60% of the Amazon biome and holds the planet’s largest biodiversity treasure trove, with over 13% of the world’s animal and plant life. Turtles, fish, jaguars, frogs, insects, primates, songbirds, and parrots are among a long list of wildlife in Brazil that is illegally targeted for domestic and international trade. According to the report’s analysis of trafficking in the Amazon region, river turtles, ornamental fish, fish for consumption, and wild meat appeared most frequently in seizure open data between 2012–2019.

River turtles 
By volume and numbers, the largest illegal wildlife trade in the Brazilian Amazon is the smuggling of river turtle eggs, despite international trade in all Amazon river turtles and land tortoises being regulated under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Within Brazil and neighbouring countries, turtles and turtle eggs are illegally harvested and traded to be used as traditional medicine, for the pet trade, as decorative items (shells), and for consumption as food. 

Fish (ornamental and for food or consumption)
Within Brazil’s airports, the most frequently seized wildlife are ornamental fish. Between 2012–2019, more than 30 species of ornamental fish were trafficked to meet regional and international demand for home aquariums, including the Cardinal Tetra, which comprised 41% of all seizures in the ornamental fish category. The Silver Arowana and critically-endangered Zebra Pleco—species popular in Asian markets—also appeared repeatedly in seizure data. The Arapaima, one of the world’s largest freshwater fish species, is a traditional food source with a strong local demand market and a growing export market to the United States and Asia. The Arapaima comprised more than 80% of all seizures of fish for consumption. 

Wild meat 
While subsistence hunting is legal in Brazil, the bushmeat trade is prohibited by law. Across Amazonian states, illegal wild meat is common within regional markets and is sold both nationally and across local borders, especially on the triple border of Brazil, Peru, and Colombia. Species such as capybara, paca, tapirs, deer, peccaries, and others are widely poached and sold.

Jaguars 
The Amazon basin provides the single largest contiguous block of remaining jaguar habitat. In recent years, jaguar poaching for their parts (fangs, skulls, bones, skins, paws, meat) has been growing, seemingly driven by market demand in Asia. Recent investigations into jaguar trafficking within Brazil referenced in the report found that at least 30 seizures of jaguar parts, mostly pelts, took place in Brazil over the last five years; however, this number likely only represents a fraction of overall poaching incidents. In 2016, media outlets reported that Brazilian enforcement officials seized body parts from 19 jaguars. 

“In addition to other major threats to the conservation of Latin America’s largest wild carnivore, such as habitat loss and retaliatory killings due to human-jaguar conflict, an increase in recent years of trafficking in jaguar parts is emerging as a new key threat to jaguars, further eroding populations of this iconic species in Brazil and other countries within its range,” said report author Sandra Charity. 

Birds
Approximately 400 species of birds (one out of five native species) are impacted by the illegal bird trade in Brazil. There is a robust international market for songbirds and parrots both from Brazil, as well as reverse-trade flow in these species from neighbouring countries to Brazil to feed a thriving domestic market connected to bird-singing contests, which are legal in Brazil. Combating the illegal songbird trade is inextricably linked to the need for stringent control of legal breeding facilities to prevent the laundering of illegally captured wild birds. Officials estimate that by 2015, a total of about three million birds were registered through fraudulent practices in order to launder wild or illegally traded birds. Enforcement data referenced in the report revealed that the top five most popular species of birds at legal, non-commercial breeding facilities were also among the species seized in the largest numbers from the illegal bird trade. In 2020, a successful program known as “Operation Delivery” that helped curb the widespread laundering of songbirds in Brazil for over 15 years was effectively demobilised.  

To reduce illegal wildlife trade in Brazil, the report offers a number of recommendations. They include developing a national strategy for combatting wildlife trafficking, enhancing data collection and sharing across agencies, strengthening current environmental crimes legislation, and investing in infrastructure and technology to handle and identify wildlife seizures. 

Wildlife Trafficking in Brazil was supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), through the Wildlife Trafficking Response, Assessment, and Priority Setting (Wildlife TRAPS) project.