Onkuri: Government agencies in many parts of the world
either don’t know much about
the problem of wildlife trafficking
or they might be understaffed, they might be under-trained,
they might be under-equipped.
So, we go in to help them and supplement their efforts.
We give them investigation training
we sometimes act as decoy buyers
to help them gather evidence that they need.
This is a typical seizure.
Each one those little blue bags contains one balled-up pangolin.
A typical seizure can have anything from 50-200 animals
and they are transported under extraordinarily
unhygienic and inhuman conditions.
They’re just balled-up and stuffed into boxes.
They may be, you know, half-starved
and certainly dehydrated by the time they reach the market.
Then to increase their body weight
they are force-fed flour and sometimes even cement
just so they can make more money.
Another trade we worked on was the exotic pet trade.
This is a fairly typical tourist night spot where
these people walk around and they ask tourists
to take pictures with slow lorises.
These animals are all poached from the wild
and their teeth are yanked out
so they don’t bite the tourists.
And when we were working with the police team on this
one of my colleagues who doesn’t always do investigations
she asked me, “Do you not sometimes
feel bad about what you are doing?”
In the sense that you are
gaining the trust of these traffickers.
Obviously they like you and they talk to you nicely
and then you get them arrested.
And I thought about it and I realized that
no, I don’t feel bad for them.
– ( audience laughter ) – ( applause )
That’s because…
That’s because once you go undercover
and you start talking to them
you realize they feel nothing for these animals.
One of the traffickers we talked to, she told us
about how she would smuggle baby slow lorises.
She would put them in little boxes
little cardboard boxes and put all those cardboard boxes
inside a big suitcase to send by air.
The animals were sedated.
And she told me that if all the animals survive
then obviously she was giving them too much air
and she could cram in a few more the next time.
But if less than half survive, then she would consider
putting them in slightly larger cardboard boxes.
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