World Wildlife Crime Report 2020

• 16 Jul 2020

• The World Wildlife Crime Report 2020 has been released by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
• It emphasizes the threat that wildlife trafficking poses to nature and the biodiversity of the planet as well as to humans as trafficking of some wild species from their natural habitat has the potential for transmission of zoonotic diseases - those caused by pathogens that spread from animals to humans. Zoonotic diseases represent up to 75 per cent of all emerging infectious diseases and include SARS-CoV-2 that caused the COVID-19 pandemic.
• The report notes that pangolins, which were identified as a potential source of coronaviruses, are the most trafficked wild mammals in the world, with seizures of pangolin scales having increased ten-fold between 2014 and 2018.