Wild animals trafficking and its impacts on the environment

Abstract

Wild animal smuggling is the third most lucrative illegal practice in the world, second only to weapons and drugs trafficking. Several factors contribute to the development of this activity, such as, the socioeconomic conditions of suppliers and intermediaries, lack of environmental education, deficiencies in control methods and agents willing to fight, large number of recipients and high financial profit. The illegal animal trade causes countless damages to various sectors of society, which fosters the loss of taxa causing damage to science, since they are used for research and development of several extremely lucrative substances from which Brazil gets no financial or scientific gain; in addition to the intensive mistreatment that animals suffer in these processes, where only 10% arrives with useful life, and the other 90% are discarded without adherence to biosecurity protocols. Animal trafficking causes unbalance in ecosystems that suffer direct and indirect damage due to changes that impact food chains, evolution and adaptation of these species and the species that interact with them. It also contributes to instability and damage to public health, as a wide range of zoonoses are spread through human-animal contact by pathogens that we have no immunity and no drugs to fight. processes, where only 10% arrives with useful life, and the other 90% are discarded without adherence to biosecurity protocols. Besides all the problems mentioned above, we have the damage to public health as aggravating factors of this illegal activity.