Wildlife trafficking is one of the most lucrative and destructive criminal enterprises in the world. Valued at more than $20 billion annually, these criminal networks impact more than 4,000 plant and animal species across 162 countries and territories. Yet for decades enforcement efforts focused narrowly on poachers, missing the broader criminal foundation that makes the trade resilient: the corrupt officials, armed non-state actors, and agile transnational networks.

In March 2026, Earth League International (ELI) published a report: Money Talks: What Criminals Told Us About Corruption. Our study synthesized over a decade of intelligence obtained firsthand by ELI’s undercover investigators from inside criminal networks to examine how corruption facilitates environmental and wildlife crime, as well as how these activities converge with other serious crimes.

We are undoubtedly at the 11th hour for biodiversity. The World Wildlife Foundation recently reported that Earth saw a 70% drop in species populations over the last fifty years.

As global leaders convened at COP16 in Cali, Colombia in late October and early November, many of the most pressing threats to biodiversity and pathways to improving governance effectiveness were on the agenda. This year’s conference theme—“Peace with Nature”—offered an impetus for a deeper dialogue on the conflict-biodiversity nexus, which included the work of “Peace@CBD”: a community of NGOs, institutions, and individuals that promotes relationships between nature, peace, and conflict.

A window into what we’re reading at the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program

Fukushima Nuclear Clean-up Begins (The Diplomat) 

It has been over 13 years since a massive 9.0 earthquake near the coastline of Japan in 2011 triggered a tsunami that irreversibly damaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Failing cooling systems within the plant led to the melting of its radioactive core reactor, which dripped toxic fallout across the plant and in the larger ecosystem. Since that catastrophe, Japan has been devising ways to responsibly clean the waste in Fukushima—and it might be getting closer to a final answer. 

UN World Wildlife Crime Report Reveals Harm of Wildlife Trafficking (UN Office on Drugs and Crime)

In the third World Wildlife Crime Report, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) discussed trends in illicit trafficking of protected species, analyzed wildlife crime harms and impacts, and took stock of all current knowledge on intervention effectiveness. This report is more comprehensive than its predecessors in 2016 and 2020 due to increased reporting. Despite 20 years of effort, wildlife trafficking persists and is connected with powerful organized crime groups operating in fragile ecosystems. This has implications not only for the spread of organized crime, but also for biodiversity loss and subsequent impacts on climatic fragility.

Today’s celebration of World Wildlife Day is a perfect time to focus greater attention on the rapidly growing Latin America-to-Asia wildlife trade. It now has reached crisis proportions, with both illegal and legal shipments rising in tandem with China’s economic investment in the region.

Experts link this mushrooming trans-Pacific animal trade to large-scale development projects by Chinese companies. Over the past 15 years, two state-owned Chinese banks have loaned more than $140 billion for infrastructure, road, railway and mining projects in Latin America.

On August 18, 2021, we witnessed a potential game-changer in the fight against international wildlife crime (IWT). One of the world’s leading wildlife trafficking hubs, Hong Kong, voted to change its laws to treat wildlife Crime as “Organized and Serious Crime.” From 2010 to 2020, local authorities valued wildlife seizures in the city at more than HK$1 billion (USD128.5 million), but the scale of the illicit trade passing through Hong Kong has likely been many times larger.