GALLERY X EXHIBITIONS

Wildlife or Commodity? Icons of a Ruthless Trade

Britta Jaschinski

Arresting Photos Illuminate the World of Wildlife Contraband.

Photographer Britta Jaschinski uses artful styling to bring attention to human demand for wildlife products. Her photographs of items seized at airports and border crossings are a quest to understand what it is about the human psyche that fuels demand for wildlife products, even as this causes much suffering and, in some cases, pushes animals to the brink of extinction.

The illegal wildlife trade is the fourth biggest illegal activity worldwide, behind arms and weapons, drugs, and human trafficking, and is often run by the same criminal syndicates. It's worth around US$23 billion a year and leaves a trail of destruction, wiping out species and destroying people's lives. Although threats to wildlife and plant species come from multiple sources, such as pollution, deforestation, destruction of natural habitats, and climate change, wildlife trafficking contributes significantly to the problem through hunting, poaching, harvesting, or depleting endangered or at-risk species.

This ruthless trade is not only a threat to human livelihoods, but it also increases biodiversity loss and the risk of viral pandemics when a virus jumps from one animal to another and then to a human. All life on earth is interconnected and thus interdependent. Nature is a human's life-support system.

Jaschinski's photographs are icons to help bring an end to the wildlife trade in our lifetime. We have more to gain from protecting nature than from working against it.