Our Wild World

Today with returning guest Ken McCloud, ex-USFW special agent, we dive deep into the dark underbelly of Internet based illegal wildlife crime. The instant and global reach, the web provides cover and laundering for this illegal trade, and it happens every day. This illegal wildlife accelerates through global platforms such as eBay, Facebook and PayPal, to facilitate illegal canned hunting in the US, and trade in a multitude of endangered species. Wildlife trafficking is a serious and complex crime and needs to be treated as such by enforcement agencies, policies and the public. Wildlife crime is bigger than conservationists, rangers and NGOs- This is insidious big-time international crime, worth billions of dollars, being facilitated though social media despite efforts law enforcement and courts, and it continues unabated in the deep reaches of the Dark Web. Monitoring the illegal traffic through social media requires multi-agency cooperation and our public service to crack it down.