The illegal wildlife trade (IWT) in endangered species of flora and fauna—worth at least US$48 billion a year in criminal proceeds—is a pressing environmental crime. With impacts encompassing species extinction, biodiversity loss, food chain and ecosystem collapses, enforcement agencies across the globe are paying increased attention to IWT. However, it is one thing to ban the trade in endangered species, and another to enforce it.
This is not just an issue of under-resourced government agencies, but also one of knowledge: how can we correctly identify what is illegal?
It is notoriously difficult to separate legal from illegal species. The same species may be legally exported from one country but illegal in another; traders may not be able to differentiate endangered from non-endangered species; and paperwork is commonly falsified tolaunder illegal species through legal loopholes, such as breeding facilities. Criminals who are aware of these grey areas and uncertainties regularly exploit them and fraudulently pass off illegal species as legal. Consequently, IWT is not just an environmental crime issue, but also a fraud issue.
For example, cheetah cubs sold in the UAE are passed off as captive-bred; sanctioned wood from Russia and Belarus is commonly mislabelled as originating from Ukraine, Poland, Estonia or Latvia; wild-caught macaques or wild-sourced orchids are laundered through authorised breeding facilities before export, with the help of falsified paperwork; and endangered European eels are often caught and smuggled when they are young, when they are virtually indistinguishable from other, non-endangered eel species.
In recognition of these issues, researchers and law enforcement agencies are turning increasingly to technological advances to tackle IWT. In the caviar industry, for instance, caviar from wild-caught sturgeons—which are critically endangered—continues to be harvested and sold under the guise of aquaculture-bred sturgeons.
International conservation laws impose a blanket ban on selling caviar from wild sturgeons, which means that all caviar sold on the market must be from captive-bred fish. However, in 2023, researchers utilised isotope and DNA testing on a range of caviar products, findingthat 21% of tested products originated from wild-caught sturgeons. These techniques compare the chemical composition of organisms, using genetic ‘fingerprints’ to distinguish them. Isotope analysis, for example, measures the variation of neutrons in chemical elements (e.g. carbon). This is particularly useful as the ratio of these isotopes tends to fluctuate in nature, and are often correlated with various climatological, biological and geological variables. In other words, a sturgeon caught from the Danube is likely to be isotopically different from one raised in an aquaculture facility.
Elsewhere, mass spectrometry—used to identify a sample’s chemical components by measuring the mass-to-charge ratio of molecules—has been used to analyse phytochemicals in timber samples, which are naturally-occurring chemicals present in or extracted from plants.
In cases where a timber sample may have been fraudulently labelled as another, or where criminals may have tampered with CITES permits (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) or other documentation, mass spectrometry can be used to identify the actual species of timber where it is not easily distinguishable. While these techniques present a significant improvement in detection abilities, they are not failsafe. Timber verification methods rely on researchers possessing existing, reliable samples of data (on both genetic and spatial information; that is, data on both the species and how its chemical composition is impacted by its environment) that can be compared with samples of interest; for example, testing whether a sample of Ukrainian timber matches instead with Russian timber, or whether timber claimed as one species is instead another. These findings are critical for lawyers and enforcement agencies working to enforce sanctions, which operate on countries as units. In biological terms, however, political borders can be meaningless, as climatologically—and thus chemically—similar groups of trees stretch across borders, meaning these techniques alone may not be able to identify whether the timber did, in fact, originate in Russia or Ukraine. Timber origin determination is even more complicated, where researchers must identify the harvest origin of an imported wood product without any prior knowledge about its provenance.
In other cases, isotopic analysis is complicated as the isotopic characteristics of organisms are not static. In one example, an NGO flagged farmed caviar as exhibiting similar isotopic qualities as wild caviar from the Black Sea, which investigations ultimately revealed was due to the company feeding their captive sturgeon with wild-caught fish from the Black Sea. Here, wild sturgeon that are illegally caught and kept in captivity can develop similar characteristics to sturgeon that are legally born in captivity. Here, isotopic analysis can instead enable fraudulent endeavours, with the isotopic values of the caviar hiding its illegal origin.
Technological improvements are undoubtedly assisting attempts to combat IWT. Instead of relying purely on visual or other sensory cues, powerful techniques can now analyse specimens at a molecular level. While loopholes remain, these advancements provide cause for optimism, and they close loopholes and raise the stakes for traffickers.
The rapid development of AI, which is capable of processing larger volumes of information than humanly possible, is a particularly noteworthy trend. Project SEEKER, for example, has been rolled out in various UK airports. Relying on a series of algorithms trained to detect illegal wildlife goods and automatically notify border force agents, the machines can screen up to 250,000 bags a day, generating a multitude of data for inspection.
Fraud sits at the core of IWT just as much as white-collar crime, and AI—already central to firms’ anti-financial crime efforts—can also be deployed on the ground to expose wildlife laundering. With organised groups combining IWT with fraud, corruption, and tax evasion, the promise of AI is clear. The real test will be keeping innovation a step ahead of criminal ingenuity.
Stay on top of the ever-changing financial crime landscape by accessing the latest information on emerging criminal techniques and the risks associated with carrying out business with particular industries or in particular jurisdictions.
The illegal wildlife trade generates over US$48 billion annually, driving species extinction, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse. As global enforcement intensifies, tackling IWT remains a critical challenge for environmental and financial crime prevention.
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