S4. E9: Rachel Nuwer: On Her Time Inside The Illegal Wildlife Trade
We are in strange and difficult times and the world is changing on what can seem like a minute-by-minute basis. Yet not all of it is terrible. Because of the pandemic, there are also silver linings shimmering above many corners of the planet.
One of them is the fact that the global wildlife trade has been making headlines for the past few months. People are paying attention. Another is that both China and Vietnam have proposed bans to limit wildlife consumption – which is a huge step in the direction that will hopefully one day end the global wildlife trade. And, a third is that because borders have closed and much of the world has slowed way down, the illegal wildlife trade has as well.
But, conservationists fear that it’s only temporary and as soon as things are up and running again, the trade will be too. Sadly, many of these silver linings are really shiny opportunities that will fade away when the world goes back to normal - unless we jump on them now.
Rachel Nuwer has spent a decade writing about, reporting on, investigating, and going undercover in the illegal wildlife trade. She is a freelance journalist whose work often focuses on wildlife trafficking and poaching and appears in publications like the New York Times and National Geographic.
She also wrote the book Poached: Inside the Dark World of Wildlife Trafficking. It’s a book for anyone who is interested in a planet that still has tigers, elephants, rhinos and thousands of other species living on it a couple generations from now. Rachel takes the reader to trafficking hotspots in twelve countries shares an in person account from the frontlines of the trade.
Rachel and I met in Brooklyn in January, pre-pandemic, to talk about her book and her time spent reporting on the wildlife trade. She is a wealth of knowledge with a deep understanding of the incredibly complex world of wildlife trafficking.
Visit RachelNuwer.Com
Read Poached: Inside the Dark World of Wildlife Trafficking
Follow Rachel on Twitter
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