Resumen
We conducted research to understand online trade in jaguar parts and develop tools of utility for jaguars and other species. Our research took place to identify potential trade across 31 online platforms in Spanish, Portuguese, English, Dutch, French, Chinese, and Vietnamese. We identified 230 posts from between 2009 and 2019. We screened the images of animal parts shown in search results to verify if from jaguar; 71 posts on 12 different platforms in four languages were accompanied by images identified as definitely jaguar, including a total of 125 jaguar parts (50.7% posts in Spanish, 25.4% Portuguese, 22.5% Chinese and 1.4% French). Search effort varied among languages due to staff availability. Standardizing for effort across languages by dividing number of posts advertising jaguars by search time and number of individual searches completed via term/platform combinations changed the proportions the rankings of posts adjusted for effort were led by Portuguese, Chinese, and Spanish. Teeth were the most common part; 156 posts offered at least 367 teeth and from these, 95 were assessed as definitely jaguar; 71 of which could be linked to a location, with the majority offered for sale from Mexico, China, Bolivia, and Brazil (26.8, 25.4, 16.9, and 12.7% respectively). The second most traded item, skins and derivative items were only identified from Latin America: Brazil (7), followed by Peru (6), Bolivia (3), Mexico (2 and 1 skin piece), and Nicaragua and Venezuela (1 each). Whether by number of posts or pieces, the most commonly parts were: teeth, skins/pieces of skins, heads, and bodies. Our research took place within a longer-term project to assist law enforcement in host countries to better identify potential illegal trade and presents a snapshot of online jaguar trade and methods that also may have utility for many species traded online.
Idioma original | Inglés |
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Número de artículo | e0280039 |
Publicación | PLoS ONE |
Volumen | 18 |
N.º | 1 |
DOI | |
Estado | Publicada - ene. 2023 |
Nota bibliográfica
Funding Information:This publication has been produced with the financial support of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the European Union, and the U.S. Department of State Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL). The research and paper were prepared with the support of the following grants, supporting the following individuals as specified. US Fish and Wildlife Service F18AP00757 Addressing illegal wildlife trafficking in Latin America AR, RW, JP, KD, JM, JR, RP, HN, SZ, TM, DR, KR, CD, MA European Union Env/2018/401-256 Scaling up enforcement capacity and cooperation to combat wildlife and timber trafficking in the Andes Amazon YM, AR, RW, MDS, AEL, MD Department of State Bureau of International Narcotics and Legal Affairs (INL) Strengthening capacity and commitment to combat wildlife trafficking in Latin America SINLEC18GR2076 YM, AR, AEL, JP The WCS Graduate Scholarship Program, a program of the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Christensen Conservation Leaders Scholarship supported Thais Morcatty and Melissa Arias. The Wildlife Conservation Network Scholarship Program supported Thais Morcatty through the Sidney Byers Scholarship award and Melissa Arias through the Pat J. Miller Scholarship. Thais Morcatty was additionally supported by the British Federation of Women Graduates through the Funds for Women Graduates. The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the donors. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, or preparation of the manuscript. We thank the US Fish and Wildlife Service for support during this study, as well as the support of the European Union to address wildlife trade in the Amazonian countries, and the U.S. Department of State Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) to address these issues more broadly across Latin America. The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) partially supported most authors during this period and Melissa Arias and Thais Morcatty were also supported by WCS Scholarships. We thank Dr. David Roberts for advice given while developing our study designs, while organizing our data, and for a review of the manuscript draft. We are grateful to Guido Miranda and Omar Torrico for assistance in production of the figures. We dedicate this paper to Julio Alfredo Madrid Montenegro and Jon Ramnarace, for the depth of the contributions they made to wildlife conservation, and in particular, their role in advancing this project’s goals before their lives were tragically cut short (2020 and 2022 respectively).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Polisar et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Copyright: © 2023 Polisar et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.