Conflict Wildlife
Definition
Wildlife products, particularly ivory, traded by armed groups to finance military operations. Documented in central and East Africa, where poaching revenue has funded rebel and militia activities.
- Main product
- Ivory
- Regions documented
- Central and East Africa
- Beneficiaries
- Rebel and militia groups
- Funding use
- Military operations
Common questions
How does poaching revenue reach armed groups rather than ordinary traffickers?+
In documented cases, militias have controlled poaching territory directly or taxed local hunters and middlemen, channeling a share of ivory sale proceeds into weapons and supplies. This differs from purely commercial poaching, where profits stay within criminal trafficking networks rather than funding an armed conflict.
How does forensic science help distinguish conflict wildlife products from other illegal wildlife trade?+
Isotope and DNA analysis can trace an ivory sample to its geographic origin, which investigators cross-reference against known militia-controlled territories to establish whether a seizure is plausibly linked to conflict financing rather than unrelated poaching.
Related terms
- Commodity Substitution
- The replacement of one trafficked species with another as enforcement tightens or consumer preferences shift. Pangolin scale volumes rose sharply as ivory...
- Consumer Country
- A country where illegal wildlife products reach their final buyers. Consumer demand drives the entire supply chain upstream.
- Source Country
- A country where wild animals or plants are poached or collected illegally. Typically biodiversity-rich, with weak enforcement capacity relative to the value...
- Transit Country
- A country used to move, process, or repackage wildlife products between source and consumer markets. Often chosen for port geography, customs vulnerability,...
- UNODC World Wildlife Crime Report
- The UN Office on Drugs and Crime's flagship analysis of global wildlife trafficking, synthesising seizure data and market intelligence. First published in...