Trafficking. Time to end it.

Let’s not dance around the matter.

This pandemic we are facing is obscene. Countless people are suffering, worried, scared. Economies are in tatters. Millions of people are dead.

So let’s talk about what’s likely to have caused this. The cause wasn’t – as it’s been suggested – the planet getting its own back. It wasn’t a random act of nature, an innocent mistake or a hideous bit of bad luck that couldn’t be foreseen.

Most likely, the cause has a name. It has an address.

A wildlife trader.

By many estimates, the virus is thought to have come from a wildlife market. These horror shows, stocked full of both animal corpses and living creatures have been a pathological disaster waiting to happen for decades.

But the criminal wildlife traders – rolling in profits – didn’t care.

To add injustice to the insult and injury, they are going to keep trafficking – keep tearing pangolins from the forests, keep snaring tigers, keep slaughtering rhinos, keep gunning down elephants and keep bringing in the money from medicines that don’t work.

We must stop them. Permanently.

That’s why we’re asking for your support. Please, donate today so we can support investigations that put wildlife criminals behind bars, enabling governments to dismantle trafficking networks for good.

We do all our work through local teams, so we’re still able to continue within the current restrictions. Ending this is long overdue, but – with your support – we may finally be able to help stop this and save countless animal lives.

Illegal wildlife trade has long posed a genuine threat to biodiversity, including not only iconic animals such as elephants, rhinos, tigers and pangolins but also other less prominent species such as saiga, helmeted hornbills, geckos and rosewoods.

Recently, however, the exponential increase in demand for products such as ivory, rhino horn and tiger parts has created a market lucrative enough to attract international criminal networks. This has resulted in a wholesale assault on the world’s wildlife, which is decimating global biodiversity, threatening many species with extinction and plundering valuable natural assets that are ultimately worth more alive than dead, particularly to those who rely on natural resources for their very livelihood.

FFI itself has been at the forefront of efforts to tackle illegal wildlife trade for almost two decades. Our practical, field-based approach revolves around putting in place effective measures on the ground to safeguard wild populations of key species from poaching for illegal trade.

There are multiple strands to FFI’s approach to this complex global issue, but they all involve working closely with our established network of in-country partners in order to ensure that our interventions are appropriate to the local context and sustainable in the long term. In particular, we engage communities as active and motivated partners in species protection and law enforcement, not least by strengthening community rights and helping to ensure that they have a vested interest in safeguarding wildlife.

So please, donate today and help us save our planet’s wonderful species.

Fauna & Flora International (FFI) is the world’s oldest conservation charity. Over the last 100 years, we have literally saved species from extinction and even – with the help of our vice-president, Sir David Attenborough – helped bring mountain gorillas back from the brink. We work to protect plants and animals around the globe, and spend 94% of our income on charitable activities.

Thank you.