Tradition and trinkets: Illegal Wildlife Trade is devastating Peru's wildlife

A large jaguar skin is displayed front and centre in one of the stalls at the Belén Market in Iquitos, the most significant open market selling wildlife in the Peruvian Amazon. Once part of a wild animal that roamed and swam free, this skin will now be sold illegally to produce luxury products, and other body parts will be used in traditional spiritual and medicinal remedies.

To address this issue, World Animal Protection has partnered with local organisations to generate evidence that can help reduce demand and facilitate a transition towards humane, sustainable and legal livelihoods for communities affected by the trade.

 Jaguars, the largest cats in the Americas, are highly threatened due, in part, to domestic and international demand for their body parts, which is driving targeted poaching and illegal trafficking throughout Latin America. Research shows that multiple gun shots are typically used to kill jaguars for the trade, often causing extreme suffering and agony to the animal.

Although worshiped by some ancient South American cultures, jaguar populations have declined by 20-25% over the past 30 years and now only inhabit around 51% of their historic geographic range. While their trade is prohibited in urban areas in Peru, our research from 2021 showed that jaguar body parts were reportedly the most expensive items sold by market vendors at Belén Market.

This is not an isolated case; Iquitos is the main area for Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT) in the north-eastern part of Peru. Poached wildlife is brought together in the region’s capital, Iquitos, for sale locally at markets like Belén, which serves a population of 400,000 people. 

Here, hundreds of Amazon species are illegally traded, including primates, jaguars, ocelots, sloths, boas, paca, caiman, and parrots. Around 9% of species sold are threatened with extinction. IWT is largely driven by domestic urban consumer demand in Belén. However, the region is also influenced by international wildlife traders and species are sought by consumers worldwide. IWT takes place with little or no appropriate health, safety, or sanitation measures, posing risk of zoonotic disease transmission.

In collaboration with local partners and communities, World Animal Protection has designed a project, with funding awarded by the UK Government through the Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund, to help understand and tackle this illegal trade and further build the evidence needed to design, encourage, and support human behaviour changes to reduce IWT in Belén.

The project also aims to support the transition to humane, sustainable and legal livelihoods for communities dependent on this type of trade. Evidence and knowledge that we gather will inform the development of the government's National Action Plan used to reduce IWT in Peru.

Our vision is for this project to be scaled and replicated so that threatened iconic Amazon species like the jaguar are no longer killed and sold in urban markets across Peru and beyond.

To learn more, please read our full report here.

Written by: Eugenia Morales, Angie Elwin, Debbie Curtis, and Neil D’Cruze.

This article features Building evidence to reduce demand for wildlife products in Peru, a project led by World Animal Protection with funding awarded by the UK Government through the Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund. 

Follow @UKBCFs on Twitter for more updates on the UK Government’s Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund.

Image credits: Fernando Carniel Machado / World Animal Protection