Wildlife trade

Image credit: World Animal Protection / Aaron Gekoski

Global wildlife trade is an inhumane industry that cruelly exploits our planet’s wildlife for financial gain.

Animals are poached, farmed or bred to be used in fashion, traditional medicine or sold as exotic pets and for wildlife entertainment venues.

Wildlife trade is a global multi-billion-dollar industry that makes huge profits at the expense of billions of individual wild animals. Legal or illegal, it’s all cruel. Wild animals are brutally slaughtered for luxury fashion products and traditional medicine, made to endure a lifetime of cruel confinement by being sold as exotic pets or cruelly trained to perform in wildlife entertainment venues.

Each year, billions of animals are cruelly snatched from their natural habitats or farmed in inhumane conditions just to be sold into this profit-driven industry that couldn’t care less about their welfare. Not only does this trade cause unimaginable suffering to animals, but it also increases our risk of diseases like COVID-19 that can transfer from wild animals to humans.

It is unjustifiable to subject wild animals to such cruelty, especially when there are plenty of plant-based alternatives available that can be used in luxury items and in traditional medicine that are innovative, advanced, and – more importantly – don’t involve animal suffering. And instead of subjecting a wild animal who has complex needs to a life of suffering, we must choose to only adopt animals who have been domesticated over generations and are comfortable living with humans – such as a cat or a dog.

Wild animals should have the right to live a life in the wild, a place where they can express their natural behaviours, and where each moment is not filled with terror, pain and prolonged suffering.

Together, we can give wild animals a life they deserve, a life worth living, and put an end to this horrific exploitation and end the cruel wildlife trade. Forever.