S7. E9: Olivia Swaak-Goldman: Taking Down the King Pins of Wildlife Trafficking
“It’s really about bringing the skills and the tools and the techniques that we've already developed and addressing other forms of transnational or international crimes - and applying them to this area that had long been forgotten.”
– Olivia Swaak-Goldman
Olivia Swaak-Goldman is the executive director of the Wildlife Justice Commission, an organization that goes around the world fighting transnational organized crime against wildlife — like an animal-focused justice league, with a mission to disrupt and help dismantle organized transnational criminal networks that are trading in wildlife, timber, and fish.
Wildlife trafficking is the fourth largest illegal trade globally, after drugs, humans, and arms. Before the Wildlife Justice Commission was formed, governments were not focused on going after the heads of these trafficking organizations. There was a lack of prioritization on wildlife crime.
And since they formed in 2015, the Wildlife Justice Commission has helped to secure the arrests of 155 wildlife criminals and taken down 35 criminal networks.
The Wildlife Justice Commission’s work is more important now then ever, as we are losing species at alarming rates and there are so many more at risk of extinction within our lifetimes.
“The Wildlife Justice Commission was created in order to go after high-level criminals. It's the same thing with drugs in a way, if you just go after the dealer on the corner, you're not going to be tremendously successful. You’ve got to do that but you need to go after the masterminds of the networks in order to get them arrested and successfully prosecuted and, also important… a seizure of assets… make it hurt, make them feel it.
Then they're going to think twice about doing this, especially in an area where we are losing so many species and at risk of losing so many. The quicker we can get them to be doing something else, that the more biodiversity we can save.” – Olivia Swaak-Goldman
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In gratitude,
Elizabeth Novogratz
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Transcript:
Olivia: [00:00:15] It's really about bringing the skills and the tools and the techniques that we've already developed in addressing other forms of transnational or international crimes and applying them to this area that had long been kind of forgotten.
Elizabeth: [00:00:36] Hi, I'm Elizabeth Novogratz, this is Species Unite, we have a favor to ask if you like today's episode and you have a spare minute, could you please rate and review Species Unite on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts? It really helps people to find the show. This conversation is with Olivia Swaak-Goldman. Olivia is the executive director of the Wildlife Justice Commission. They go around the world fighting organized crime against wildlife like an animal focused Justice League. This is more important now than ever. We're losing species at an alarming rate, and there are so many more on the brink of extinction. Wildlife trafficking is the fourth most profitable global crime after drugs, humans and firearms. But until the Wildlife Justice Commission was formed, no one was really going after the big guns. Instead, focus was on the low level, more accessible criminals like poachers and smugglers. But since the Wildlife Justice Commission came into existence in 2015, they have helped dismantle 36 criminal networks and prevented them from regrouping and facilitated the arrest of one hundred and fifty six high level criminals. Hi, Olivia.
Olivia: [00:02:10] Hi, Beth.
Elizabeth: [00:02:12] Hey. It is so nice to be here with you in person to record this. Thank you so much for doing it.
Olivia: [00:02:19] Well, thank you so much for inviting me and for your great work.
Elizabeth: [00:02:21] Thank you. Hey, so before we get into the Wildlife Justice Commission, which I want to hear all about, I want to talk about. I mean, you've had a massive career before this that in a way kind of led to this. Did this surprise you that this is where you ended up?
Olivia: [00:02:39] Well, it didn't surprise me, but it seems to surprise many others. A lot of people have said to me, Olivia, what happened? You went off piste. For me, it was really, really clear. There was a red line in how I ended up at the Wildlife Justice Commission because the reason I studied law and went into diplomacy was really about how do we protect the vulnerable in society and how do you use law to do that and get governments to enforce the laws that are they've agreed to that are on the books, but that are hard for them to do that maybe they don't want to do. So it's really for me about justice in the broader sense and whether that's children in armed conflict or species that are at the brink of extinction. We've agreed as a society that they deserve protection, and the government will give them that protection. If they're not doing it, we've got to figure out a way to get them to do it.
Elizabeth: [00:03:25] Will you talk about what you were doing before the Wildlife Justice Commission.
Olivia: [00:03:28] Sure. So I started out, I studied political science and then I studied law and then started to work very early on in the sort of nascent international criminal justice sphere it was in the early nineties. The Security Council had just kind of come unblocked, and they created the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. I moved to The Hague and I started working for the first U.S. American Judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, who was just a phenomenal judge. I was her legal assistant, really trying to provide some international law background for her and give her a background in sort of, you know, laws of war and international criminal law. There was a lot that wasn't known then. There hadn't been a lot of jurisprudence since the Second World War, some national cases, but we were really trying to figure out, OK, what's protected? How has the law evolved and how do we hold individuals accountable for these massive crimes? That's the idea that by holding individuals accountable, you'll have a new way for impact in addition to holding a government accountable because it hurts more if you have to go to jail or you have to give up resources, it feels different than, you know, sanctions or some other way of holding a government accountable.
Elizabeth: [00:04:35] Well, and there were a lot of individuals that absolutely should have been held accountable.
Olivia: [00:04:39] Absolutely. I really liked it because it was about how we make an impact. How do we get these laws enforced so that people are protected as almost a preventative measure? Then I thought, You know what? I've been living in the Netherlands for a long time, and I've been staying in this international community, working in English, and I, my eldest son, was just born and I thought, OK, it's time to go local. I'm going to really integrate myself into the community and the Netherlands. I was lucky enough to get a position at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the International Law Department doing international criminal law and laws of war, and working with the Dutch government to try and get them to push the agenda on these issues. It was really at the cusp of law and policy, which I think is great. It's one thing to be thinking big thoughts and it's another to be applying them to to real life circumstances
Elizabeth: [00:05:26] And making real change.
Olivia: [00:05:27] Guantanamo Bay was happening and dealing with different governments on the laws of war and what does it mean? And is there such a thing as enemy combatant? How do we protect our norms and values while at the same time this paradigm shift after 9-11 and the role of government and invasiveness and are the rules that were created in the post-war system made for purpose now in this new system? So it was incredibly interesting. I've just been really lucky. I've had tremendous, interesting jobs, but I missed in a way the dynamism of the international environment and working more closely on the accountability side of things. So then I went to the International Criminal Court and worked in the office of the prosecutor there, and I did the diplomatic work for the prosecutor. So really trying to get governments to live up to their obligations and to cooperate with the courts to do whatever was needed. The other was to get suspects that turned over or to get a reference in an intergovernmental resolution showing support for the court or working with the legal advisers to get their support.
Elizabeth: [00:06:30] So you're always a little on the edge of danger. I mean, there's always like a danger factor in a lot of your jobs.
Olivia: [00:06:35] Yeah, I mean, definitely it's not a state route. I feel so lucky to have gotten the education I've had and to be able to use whatever skills I have to be able to contribute to making things a little bit better and trying to get governments to do things that that aren't easy to do, because governments have different priorities and especially with like massive crimes, there's a lot of reasons why they they don't want to deal with it.
Elizabeth: [00:07:00] What would they prefer to be doing without you pushing them?
Olivia: [00:07:04] Well, sometimes it's hard to prosecute those most responsible. Or they think, let's just move on with paper over it. The fighting has stopped. Let's just get on with it. But that's not a durable peace. That's something that's built on quicksand very often because you've got all those horrible things that have happened and people are feeling a lot of resentment and fear and lack of trust. It's this long term idea as well in terms of if there's a mechanism for holding individuals accountable, then they're less likely to engage in this kind of conduct. So we try to keep them on the righteous path.
Elizabeth: [00:07:42] Yeah, and it's less likely that other people are going to want to follow in their footsteps.
Olivia: [00:07:46] Exactly, exactly. I was in the ICC for about seven years and then after a period, I just said, OK, it's time. It's time to do something else. That's when I went to the Wildlife Justice Commission.
Elizabeth: [00:07:57] It had just formed right. It wasn't. It hadn't been around very long.
Olivia: [00:08:01] Right. So while the Justice Commission was created in twenty fifteen and I joined in February twenty sixteen, it was really new, it was a startup. It was kind of a crazy idea. For me, it was really different because it was also a non-profit. Also, the subject was in a way different. I mean, it's about protecting wildlife and addressing wildlife crime. But again, I saw this as very much how do we use a law to protect these species? You know, we're going to lose them. So the devastation is just obvious, right? How terrible. My three sons could grow up in a world where they can't see a rhino or certain turtles and tortoises. So that's something that I believe in really strongly, but also about sort of the rule of law. We've agreed amongst ourselves to have this protection and governments aren't living up to their obligations. So I really thought it made a lot of sense in terms of how it would approach this.
Elizabeth: [00:08:57] How did it get formed? Because until 2015, this didn't exist. So who was taking down like these, the heads of these wildlife trafficking organizations?
Olivia: [00:09:07] Well, and that's exactly, governments really weren't focusing on taking down the heads of these trafficking organizations. What you had before the Wildlife Justice Commission was created was a lack of prioritization on wildlife crime. It's the fourth largest transnational organized crime generating about $20 billion a year in annual revenue. The World Bank has estimated that the costs from wildlife crime, together with IUU fishing and timber crimes, is one to two trillion dollars a year. I mean, just massive amounts for these economies. But it never really got the attention. It's still considered in some cases, like an emerging crime. Well, it's not emerging. It's around, it's there, It's full fledged
Elizabeth: [00:09:45] Some of the damage, I mean, a lot of the damage is irreversible at this point.
Olivia: [00:09:49] Exactly, exactly. I mean, we're at risk of losing a million species in the next 10 years. You know, losing is losing. There's no second chance. Like once they're gone, they're gone. There are less than four thousand tigers in the wild, less than 100 hundred of these turtle turtles and the fauna and flora as well. So it's really we're at risk of things disappearing and never being able to get them back, which is so devastating for biodiversity, but for a variety of different issues as well. So these governments weren't really focusing on it. Those that were on the ground where a lot of the crimes happened. It's global, by the way. I mean, it's not just a sort of Africa, Asia etc.
Elizabeth: [00:10:28] Yeah. I want to talk about that because I think most people think, Oh, that's in Africa, Asia thing, and it's really sad we're going to lose rhinos, and that's as far as they get.
Olivia: [00:10:36] Exactly.
Elizabeth: [00:10:37] It's so much more complicated.
Olivia: [00:10:38] It's all regions of the world. Criminals have been identified in like one hundred and fifty countries. Germany has a big problem with reptile trafficking, for example. In Latin America, a lot of the species of the cheetah and the totoaba and the vaquita. You know what? They are really almost completely gone. So it's incredibly global. Even if the species themselves aren't going through one of these countries, the money laundering that's happening, that's all over the world as well. So it really affects every single country and every region in the world. I think we haven't been looking at it with the right perspective. The Wildlife Justice Commission was created in order to go after those high level criminals. So it's the same thing with drugs in a way. If you just get it going after the dealer on the corner, you're not going to be tremendously successful. I mean, you've got to do that. You can't let them run all over. But you need to go after the masterminds of the networks in order to get them arrested and successfully prosecuted. Also important, I think, a seizure of assets like make it hurt, make them feel it, and then they're going to think twice about going up, you know, doing this, especially in an area where we are losing so many species and a risk of losing so many, the quicker we can get them to be doing something else, the more biodiversity we can save.
Elizabeth: [00:11:54] So before the Wildlife Justice Commission, was anyone going after the big kingpins or was it just kind of one off or what was happening?
Olivia: [00:12:03] Before the Wildlife Justice Commission was created, you didn't have this like focus on accountability for the top level criminals. I mean, you have different international institutions which play a role, but there's no international body like really about adjudicating these crimes. You don't have an international criminal court for wildlife crime or you don't. It's all related to the national government that should be doing it, but often they don't have the resources or they don't have the skills, and it's not a priority for them. I mean, every government has limited resources. They're saying, you know what, the terrorism in the north is is a bigger priority for me or human trafficking or arms or, there's just so much corruption that facilitates this crime. So it makes it an extra reason why some governments are hesitant to bring these cases because, you don't know who is involved and it makes it a challenge
Elizabeth: [00:12:52] That makes sense. So now it has formed. How do you end up there?
Olivia: [00:12:59] Well, it's interesting because the idea behind the Wildlife Justice Commission was, we're going to do this phenomenal investigation. We're going to investigate these crimes. We're going to go after the top level people. We're going to put together a case file like a dossier, give it to several different government ministries, whether it's, the Wildlife Crime Authority and the Organized Crime Authority and the Tax and Customs, and ask them to take steps against the top individuals that we identify. Then we would engage in this process of national dialogue where we would try and get them to bring the cases. If they did, great. But if they didn't, we would have what's called a public hearing. So hold the government responsible for failing to hold the top level criminals responsible. The idea was this would also help alleviate the concerns about corruption, because if you went to a variety of different stakeholders, there was no way they could cover it up. They'd have to explain why they weren't bringing these cases. So this was why I got involved. It was really about accountability and how we use this mechanism, which for me was similar to the sort of international criminal accountability, but then more sort of holding the states accountable for not bringing the individuals to account. So it's kind of a hybrid of state accountability and individualism, but it really attracted me and got in contact with people that were helping to set it up. And because of my experience on sort of international justice and particularly the diplomacy of international justice, they thought it would be a really good fit and that I could kind of help bring the organization to where it needed to go.
Elizabeth: [00:14:27] When you first came in, did you have any idea of the scale of what was happening? It's so massive, so global and so chaotic. I guess all crime is chaotic, but this has been kind of like cowboy crime for so long.
Olivia: [00:14:41] Exactly. I had no idea that it was this global. I mean, I feel really strongly about the need for us as an organization to look at a variety of different areas in a variety of different species and a variety of different crime types in terms of wildlife and fisheries where we've moved into now and eventually into timber crimes, because it's also about putting a spotlight on these crimes. And that, I think is just so important that we raise the profile and therefore also the prioritization to bring these cases. I was really lucky, had a great team of investigators and they were busy putting together their case files and really following the leads that helped shape where we were going because we use intelligence led investigations. First of all, we focus on those most endangered species. So that means either that they're on the absolute brink of extinction or that they're protected and law enforcement has been sadly really ineffective at addressing it. Then we look at the most impactful offenders. So who if we take out, if we get them successfully arrested and prosecuted, we'll have the most impact on the networks and have it fall apart. It's very similar to the ICC model of those most responsible for the greatest crime. So the logic of that was, for me, very, very clear and we go through a whole series of matrices of which cases we should be bringing and which not, but it's because we do intelligence led investigation, we're constantly analyzing and thinking, OK, this is the next step. What does it tell us? Where should we be going in order to be most impactful with the limited means that we have? Also, where are we going to be most effective? I think it's really important to highlight not only when countries aren't doing well, but when they are doing well. So China, actually, at the end of 2017, the ivory ban came into force and we've been analyzing their case law and they have been really effective in bringing large scale, impactful cases against the highest level criminals. They're doing exactly what we're saying we should be doing. They're doing financial investigations, they're looking into the resources of these individuals. They're taking a year or two to be following them around and mapping the whole network.
Elizabeth: [00:17:00] That's awesome. There can't be nearly as much ivory going to China now, then right?
Olivia: [00:17:05] No there's much less because it wasn't there. Yeah, exactly. That's why you're seeing an increase in pangolin scales, because also the seizures or the shipments they need to get turn a profit the traffickers, so they then load up the ship.
Elizabeth: [00:17:20] So the demand, the demand for ever has gone way down since China. Nobody else enforces a ban like China can.
Olivia: [00:17:26] Not as effectively as China is. But we have seen some increased enforcement in Lao and in Vietnam. But for example, we did a report noting that the ivory trafficking had been displaced to Cambodia because their enforcement wasn't quite as robust. We can't let our foot off the gas. We have to be really strong. The more places that enforcement is strong, the prioritization is there, right? That governments and agencies are saying this is an area that we take seriously and are going to devote our resources to, then the more likely criminals are to say the risks are too high. The rewards are too low. I'm going to do something else.
Elizabeth: [00:18:07] Can you take us through a case like just how it goes from the beginning, how you select it kind of all the way through the investigation until it gets to you?
Olivia: [00:18:16] One case, for example, we came across an Indian national who was trafficking in turtles and tortoises in 2015. One of our first we'd heard about him. We got into contact with him. So first we figure out like. We go through this matrix. What are the key issues? What are the species? How vulnerable are they in terms of what we know about the entry point, the individual? How far are they in the network? How impactful is this network? Then we decide, OK, well, this is a network that we think is really important, and we're going to take it, take it further. They're playing a big role in the trafficking of endangered species. So in different roles. So we go after completely different roles. So sometimes it's about a transporter in Africa, for example, who is really important in sending poaching teams out and then the teams come back to him and he manages to get it to the other coast to send it out. Sometimes it's somebody in a third country that's really a tramp, like a large transporter, tons of product get them to him and then it'll go elsewhere as well. Sometimes it's more on the sort of closer to the demand side, where it's where it's a network that's responsible for bringing in tons of different species closer to the demand side and facilitating that. So there are all these different roles and we try and and and hit the networks in a variety of different ways so that they can't regroup very easily. The idea is to knock them whilst they’re down.
Elizabeth: [00:19:46] So do the investigators start. Say, there's a bust or something, a bunch of pangolins. I mean, do they start with the little guy and work their way up to figure out who's behind all this or how? Like, how does that kind of go down?
Olivia: [00:19:59] Yeah, sometimes we tend not to focus on the little guys. It can take a long time to move up, so if you engage for a long time, you've got to build trust with the traffickers. You can't move too quickly. You have to build that trust also with the law enforcement that they feel like they can trust you to be bringing these strong cases. So we engage with the traffickers with a variety of different undercover operatives. So we've got teams.
Elizabeth: [00:20:28] So cool. This is awesome. Ok, sorry. Go ahead.
Olivia: [00:20:31] What it really is, it's I mean, if you think about it, this is what we do for other forms of organized crime.
Elizabeth: [00:20:36] No one was ever doing this.
Olivia: [00:20:38] Exactly. That's why I love this organization. In a way, it's really about bringing the skills and the tools and the techniques that we've already developed in addressing other forms of transnational or international crimes and applying them to this area that had long been kind of forgotten. We have those skills. We know how to do it, but we just haven't been doing it here. We were really pushed for what are called advanced investigative techniques. So rather than, if there's a shipment, for example a ton of pangolin scales, rather than seize those assets, seize that shipment. One possibility is to let it go through and to let it go through to its next destination and its next destination and see how that goes. Then you can figure out who's involved along the supply chain and then get individuals arrested throughout the supply chain. You can take out the whole network, which is much more effective. I mean, criminals are, they're business people. So they factor in a certain amount of loss into their business model seizures, seizing the product. It's important, but that's not going to be as effective as actually getting the individuals arrested and successfully prosecuted because they count on losing a certain amount of their product. So we need to use those advanced investigative techniques in terms of control deliveries, letting it go through the supply chain. For example, there was a seizure in Hong Kong a couple of years ago, I think, in 2017. It was then the largest seizure of ivory that had ever taken place. But the legislation in Hong Kong, which is now changed, didn't consider wildlife crime a serious organized crime, so they didn't use the techniques that you would if they'd been drugs or weapons, for example, covered in plastic and they didn't fingerprint. They didn't do any of that. As far as I know, no one's ever been arrested or prosecuted for these crimes. So it's really about scaling up the professionalism and then getting the legislation in place. The legislation in most places is pretty good, not everywhere, but in most places. But then it's about applying the skills that we have and we know what to do. It's getting to do it and bringing in a variety of different stakeholders because not everyone thinks wildlife is important.
Elizabeth: [00:22:58] Which makes zero sense to me. Even if you don't like elephants or you don't like animals. It's the planet. I mean, this is biodiversity, and it's all connected to the humans who are living in these places. It's not just about these animals, it's exponential of all the things that it's about. In a lot of ways, yes, weapons are terrible, obviously, but in a lot of ways, this has so much more of an effect because it just hits so many levels from individuals to the planet. It took you to the world to lose certain species and this whole area falls to pieces.
Olivia: [00:23:35] Exactly and it's such a huge impact on security and rule of law. It's linked to climate change, timber and ocean health. All of that is carbon sinks, human health with zoonotic diseases. So the impact, even if you don't really care about your biodiversity or your animals, it's huge. So every government agency, for example, has its own interests. So how do we explain to them why it's in their interest to be looking at this crime type as well? So we recently did a report earlier this year on crime convergence. So on the links between wildlife crime and other forms of organized crime. I've been speaking to someone and they said, Yeah, I mean, everyone talks about convergence, but no one's ever put anything out, so it must not exist. For me, that was like, OK, guys, let's get on it because it definitely exists. We've seen it right with the links between wildlife crime and human trafficking. It's been documented with wildlife crime and timber trafficking, but also with corruption and money laundering and drugs, credit card fraud, all kinds of different organized crime. What's interesting is this makes it more attractive for other agencies. You know, you get the DEA involved, for example, or Homeland Security. If you can show that by investigating wildlife crime, you're also addressing networks that are involved in drugs or human trafficking or weapons. You can get these agencies involved and then also be more impactful by working together. Again, like revenue's getting the revenue services involved because they're missing out on all the taxes that are going on and the fraud and the rest of it. So the money laundering, so really trying to bring in a variety of different stakeholders, that's absolutely imperative.
Elizabeth: [00:25:14] So this report just came out?
Olivia: [00:25:15] It came out a few months ago.
Elizabeth: [00:25:16] Yeah and since it's been out, has it had any effect on any government? Are people paying attention to it?
Olivia: [00:25:21] They are. In fact, we were able to highlight it at some U.N. resolutions, and it seems like people, governments are being more attuned to obviously, I mean, they've got their own priorities, but showing them why it's important and using wildlife crime, as we call it, the soft underbelly of organized crime because the criminals aren't as sophisticated generally, they're not used to somebody going after them with electronic surveillance and the control deliveries and all the stuff we spoke about. So they're not as sharp as drug criminals generally are.
Elizabeth: [00:25:55] Well, they haven't had to play like the cops and robbers thing, at that level for decades, like everybody else.
Olivia: [00:26:02] Exactly. One of the cases we worked on in Nigeria, for example, recently we worked with the Nigerian Customs Service to make two different arrests, one in July of this year and the other in September, on the same network. This network was responsible for approximately 50 percent of the major global seizures of ivory and pangolin scale since 2018. It's just hugely impactful and what we have done with the customs authorities is they've got seven phones from these individuals that were arrested, and those are just a source of information. So on the one hand, it's showing their contacts and evidence of their criminal activity. So that's an evidentiary brief for the Prosecution Service in order to bring these cases. On the other hand, it's also great information in terms of what's happening, where do the networks go. Every time you get somebody's phone, that's a huge source of information that we can use to really try to figure out what's going on and to document their criminal activity, but also to get a better sense of what's happening in the world. Why the networks are interrelated and who their contacts are, and so on.
Elizabeth: [00:27:12] So all this gets seized right in Nigeria. Yeah. Then what happens?
Olivia: [00:27:16] Then the prosecutor puts together a brief of evidence in order to bring the criminals to account. So far, the Nigerian cases that haven't gone to trial yet, but we have a 100 percent conviction rate in all the cases that have gone through the court system. Which is great, absolutely, because that's what matters in the end, like the individuals being held accountable. Therefore, they're going to think twice about the dynamic change from low risk, high reward.
Elizabeth: [00:27:43] Let's go back to the guy in India with the turtles and tortoises. What happens when you get the big guy, the kingpin? Then what happens to everybody below him? Do they go to somebody else or do they disappear?
Olivia: [00:27:55] So in this case, the Indian national based in Thailand, in the turtles and tortoises. So we worked on him for five years in the end. In the end, in February of this year, we worked with the Royal Thai police to arrest him with a live leopard cub. When this came out, it was like, OK, one leopard cub. Really awful. Really important. But what does this mean? Why is this important? His phone had more than 11000 messages on it, like six thousand contacts, just a tremendous amount of data on there. This helped us to see where he was really active. He had a network throughout Southeast Asia and not only dealing in turtles and tortoises, but in a variety of different protected species like protected meaning like less than one hundred left in the world. So we're working with the prosecutor there to help build that case
Elizabeth: [00:28:47] Every bust, every person you take down. It gives a whole species a chance. So there must be something so I don't know, just something special about your team and what you're fighting for together.
Olivia: [00:29:00] Everybody feels really passionately about what they're doing. One of our senior criminal intelligence officers, she'd worked in the UK police for a long time and she was doing a variety of different contexts and she was really like, ok, I want to. I want to focus now on doing something where I see the broader impact and working on wildlife crime, she really feels so empowered and impactful. So everybody's really incredibly committed and that's a joy to work with the Wildlife Justice Commission. It's small, it's nimble. I see the impact we're making and I feel like this is an area where in my working lifetime, I can really make a difference and that was really important.
Elizabeth: [00:29:42] You already are, you guys are incredibly successful so far. When you approach a government and say, hey, we're here and it just sounds like a team of superheroes, right? Worth a lot on the justice commission. How do they react to you?
Olivia: [00:29:55] In the beginning, they were kind of like, Who are you and you're based where and what are you trying to do? And kind of sort of, OK, interesting. Kind of a wait and see approach that was definitely the first year or so there were. But we very much take the sort of position of, head down, work hard, show what you've got and build your reputation brick by brick and we've been really successful at that. They see the professional nature of what we do. We're able to do things that they either don't know how to do yet or they don't have the resources for it. We have the largest criminal intelligence unit of any non-profit and most governments dedicated to wildlife, and they're all women.
Elizabeth: [00:30:43] Oh my gosh, I didn’t know that.
Olivia: [00:30:44] Yeah, no, it's got about half women in the team and a lot of our very good undercovers are women, but also the whole criminal intelligence unit is women, which is phenomenal. So, yeah, everybody's really committed. So we've built this reputation. We really try to help the government and make sure that they're the ones that are getting the positive feedback and the results, because in the end, it's only governments that can do the work. These steps can do these seizures and arrests and prosecutions. Because of that there's been more and more support from governments, and they've actually been coming to us asking us for our help, which is just great. That's, I think, a sign of the level of respect that we've earned from Governments.
Elizabeth: [00:31:15] Right. They're also seeing the impact of when you do take someone out what that means.
Olivia: [00:31:23] Exactly.
Elizabeth: [00:31:24] With a lot of drug things you hear and I don't know, just this was from movies, but when you take out the one guy, somebody else, like a new head comes on the snake. Does that happen a lot in wildlife or can you really stop a certain part of it?
Olivia: [00:31:37] Generally, when someone's taken out a new head will emerge, and that's just that's crime because there's a vacancy and someone's going to seize that opportunity. But the more you keep going after the network, at a certain point, they're saying, I don't want to do that anymore, it's just not worth it. So we've seen examples of that, both in terms of the modus operandi of the networks changing, becoming more concerned, asking for different types of evidence before or like documentation before they let us in to see the product. We see a sort of growing wariness, but also individuals saying, I'm just not going to do anymore, I'm going to go into, raising agriculture or something because it's just not worth it to risk going to jail for a heavy sentence. So crime, it's really hard to completely eradicate crime, sure. But you need to be addressing it on the demand issue as well. If you don't have the enforcement, it's not going to work because and even if you do have enforcement, crime will displace them. So if it's strong in one country or in one area, they're going to go to areas that are less strong. So we need to be building this kind of global reach where governments are taking responsibility for bringing these cases so that in the end, there's nowhere for these criminals to go.
Elizabeth: [00:32:54] You say this is happening pretty much all over the world, right?
Olivia: [00:32:58] Yeah, the crimes are.
Elizabeth: [00:32:58] Are there places that have totally shocked you that you just would have not really thought wildlife trafficking would be happening?
Olivia: [00:33:05] Well, Germany, for example, I mean, they're pretty well organized but you know, there's an end Western Europe, there's a fair amount of it as well. So that's something that maybe doesn't get the attention. It's not a priority for those governments.
Elizabeth: [00:33:21] Does it get dangerous?
Olivia: [00:33:22] I mean, it gets dangerous to the extent that you're dealing with criminals. But we have a lot of experience in how you go about working in a criminal environment. So we do everything we can to mitigate those risks.
Elizabeth: [00:33:35] But it does get dangerous.
Olivia: [00:33:37] Yeah. But again, I think my colleagues that are former law enforcement have up to fifty years of experience, and they've been sending teams out. They know what to do to mitigate the risk, but sure. But it's certainly not a risk free environment that we're operating in. But it's imperative to do it, if we don't do it, who's going to do it? In the end, we need the governments to do it, but we have to show them the importance of doing it, help them to get the skills, to be able to do it and to prioritize this. If need be, hold them accountable if they don't do.
Elizabeth: [00:34:08] Right and are some just completely resistant to you?
Olivia: [00:34:11] In the beginning, they were resistant, yeah. But more and more now they're seeing the value of doing it and the benefits for them. So really trying to get trends out to see what's happening very early on because we engage with thousands of criminals and we have all these different engagements, we can tell when things are shifting. When they're geographically shifting or when the means of transportation is shifting or when species are shifting. I think in 2019, already, we came out with a report noting that in large seizures, the amount of ivory was going down and the amount of pangolin scales was going up because the value of ivory had gone down. So to really say to policymakers as well, like you need to be thinking about your protection of your pangolins because they are the hot topic right now, that's what you need to be looking at.
Elizabeth: [00:35:01] Which is so crazy. If you think about that, pangolins are. I mean, it's all horrible no matter what animal it is. But if you think about that, it's pangolins that are the hot topic after Covid.
Olivia: [00:35:12] Right? Well, this was yeah, this was pre Covid. But still, there's a tremendous amount of pangolin scales and live pangolins being trafficked. This Nigerian network is responsible for huge amounts of pangolin being trafficked, not from elsewhere in Africa and then into Nigeria and then out into the rest of the world. So there are a lot of vulnerable species, orangutans, we see a lot of orangutan trafficking there. So few left and they have to kill so many to get one into the trade.
Elizabeth: [00:35:40] And so they get in for the pet trade?
Olivia: [00:35:44] Yeah.
Elizabeth: [00:35:45] And they're getting babies.
Olivia: [00:35:46] Yeah, exactly.
Elizabeth: [00:35:47] So heartbreaking.
Olivia: [00:35:48] Yeah, it is heartbreaking. Yeah. There's so few left and they're going to kill the parents, the mom and some of them die in transport. So the live pet trade is not really seen as a serious crime type.
Elizabeth: [00:36:01] I mean, people that have come on Species talk about the pet trade because they're, because they're directly involved with protecting them. But aside from that and people I know personally because of that, I don't know anyone who's really talking about the global pet trade.
Olivia: [00:36:15] Exactly, exactly. That's actually our least funded area of work is the live pet trade. You know, turtles and tortoises. What's interesting is we did a report a couple of years ago on the corruption that enabled the turtle trafficking in Southeast Asia. That was really, really interesting because not only you know about what's happening to the species and about species that weren't being protected nationally because nobody knew that they were being trafficked to the level that they were. But also the criminal and corrupt elements throughout the supply chain. So, you know, at this airport or at this harbor, our contacts are the criminals that told us that they have people in place, and that's really important for addressing a variety of different crime types. So again, there's no reason why the live pet trade should be left out of this enforcement.
Elizabeth: [00:37:08] No especially because I mean, they're all vulnerable, but it's with such vulnerable species for the most part. So is this change to like when you first started justice that really moved you? But did you have a thing with animals and the planet? Or did that come with doing this more?
Olivia: [00:37:25] It definitely changed me. I was focused mostly on people. How do we protect the vulnerable individuals and communities? This has changed me tremendously to look at our natural world as so integral to who we are as a species ourselves and how we engage with the planet and how the devastation that we're causing and not only the devastation we're causing to ourselves at climate change and all of that, but how we're interacting with the planet in a way that's just it's unacceptable. Who are we to be just destroying these species so that they never again return.
Elizabeth: [00:38:06] And they're really going. I mean, we're really watching them go. We really are in extinction right now. You'll read about it and then something else is on the news, right? So it's kind of going the same way as every other thing in the news. So that's one of my big questions for you and for myself is how do you get people to care like people outside of what you're doing and the fight you're fighting, like the world to kind of back you up?
Olivia: [00:38:31] That's the key. That is absolutely the key. And that's what I've been trying to do for the last twenty five years, at least. It's about showing it why it's in their interest as well. I think that's in the end, you know, relying on just sort of noble motives is really hard. Not everybody is motivated by those, unfortunately, although I believe most people are at heart, you know, good people. But why is it in their interest? That's why I've been really trying to say, OK, if you want to talk about revenues, right, you're losing a lot of revenues from your tourism or customs fraud money. That's products that are not being taxed . If you arrest an angel and you seize their assets, you can use those for something that you care about, whether it's, you know, increased literacy for four children is also really, really important. But to show them why what we're doing to the planet is in their best interest to solve, to stop and get them to use their skills and their resources to help address it and why this will be good for them as well.
Elizabeth: [00:39:34] Yeah, that's awesome, Olivia. It really feels like you guys are a team of superheroes. It is so incredible what you're doing, and I can't even fathom that this didn't exist. Not that many years ago and how important this is. So thank you for doing this.
Olivia: [00:39:50] Well, thank you so much, and thanks for all the attention you're bringing to these issues. It's really important that we generate support for addressing these issues, and you're playing a big role in that. So thank you.
Elizabeth: [00:40:07] To learn more about Olivia and the Wildlife Justice Commission, go to our website, SpeciesUnite.com. We will have links to everything, we are on Facebook and Instagram, @SpeciesUnite. If you have a spare minute and could do us a favor, please subscribe rate and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps people find the show. If you would like to support the podcast, we greatly appreciate it. Go to our website, SpecieUnite.com and click Donate. I'd like to thank everyone at Species Unite, including Gary Knudsen, Caitlin Pierce, Amy Jones, Paul Healey, Santana, Poky, Bethany Jones and Anna Conner, who wrote and performed today's music. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful day!
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