The illegal wildlife trade is the fourth largest illegal trade in the world.
Behind counterfeiting, drugs and human trafficking.
It's worth an estimated 15 billion pounds annually, and it's on the rise.
Today I'm in London and inside this building is the Metropolitan Police's 'Dead Shed',
where all of the confiscations from the trade end up.
God. I mean, that's one of those things that you see in movies, but you don't actually think that people do it.
Is this a primate?
This is, without a doubt, the strangest room I've ever been in in my life.
The Metropolitan Police are at the forefront of policing London's wildlife crimes.
Detective Constable Sarah Bailey has been working with the force for over 20 years and has agreed to show me just what they're
dealing with. Oh my God.
Welcome to the Metropolitan Police Wildlife Crime Store.
I'll tell you, this is not how I thought my first experience of seeing a polar bear would be.
So much ivory.
Wow. look at that.
I know that this is an elephant's foot.
But what is...
What's this for?
Just an ornament, I would imagine.
That's so weird. And you can see all the hairs on it still.
Is that a python?
Yes.
God. And these skins.
There's just so many things.
Like tiny, tiny little things.
Tiger parts, pangolin scales.
God Almighty.
It's just mad.
Absolutely mad.
How big is the illegal wildlife trade in London?
Well, it's hard to quantify, but it certainly exists.
And anybody that has access to an electronic device
could potentially participate in the illegal wildlife trade, because if there are items being offered for sale,
then it's as simple as clicking on buy and then they've participated in the trade.
It's something that we are very mindful of.
We are just scratching the surface, really.
Sarah fills me in on some of the more unusual cases her team have dealt with over the years with successful convictions.
What are these eggs?
Those are somebody's egg collection, either for probably private collections or possibly to export.
Why would we export them?
Here in the UK, We've got falcons, Peregrine falcons.
They have a value within the Falcon trade.
It may be that a Falconer perhaps wants to import fresh Bloodstock into their breeding programme,
and so there would be potentially a purpose for exporting a live egg,
to be hatched elsewhere.
In the UK, it's illegal to take or possess wild bird eggs.
Sometimes whole clutches can be taken in one go,
and if the bird only breeds once per year, this can have serious consequences for bird populations.
What's the book for?
That's actually a concealment device if you open it up.
Oh, my God.
So this would have, this actually had the eggs inside it.
Yeah. I mean, it's a way of avoiding detection.
If the Police come knocking, we're not necessarily going to know to look inside.
God. I mean, that's one of those things that you see in movies, but you don't actually think that people do it.
So what is the story of all of these heads?
Well, these have been taken from collectors, bought them from a variety of places around the world,
either Africa or in the case of the hands and heads down there from Indonesia.
That's like.
The kind of thing that you would see,
in a like an anthropological museum from things of the past.
What's the story behind these hands?
We identified actually, Border Force identified a trader in London
who was selling hands via a marketplace online.
We investigated further, identified the individual.
I obtained a warrant.
We searched his address and he had 30 or 40 of these primate hands and
feet that he was offering for sale.
This is like really?
Really macabre and quite scary.
Yeah. I mean, some people collect stamps, other people collect skulls.
This case was quite unique in that we were able to identify the Indonesian supplier.
So I communicated that information to the Indonesian law enforcement and they prosecuted that person.
So hopefully that supplier was taken out.
This is snakeskin, right?
Yes. Reticulated python.
This is a reticulated python.
Longest species in the world.
What's this story?
Why are these caps in here?
They were recently imported from Indonesia.
A parcel was intercepted coming into the UK with the name and address on the box.
So we were able to see who it was destined for.
When we did further investigations,
we saw that these items were being advertised on Instagram.
On Instagram.
Yeah. And then once that then puts it in the trade bracket.
So we then needed to check whether they had permits to import these items for trade.
The permits were missing.
And so the person was, was spoken to at the Police station,
And subsequently charged and then convicted.
So this was somebody who was was it someone who had quite a big following on Instagram?
Was it just a random Instagram account?
I think they did. They had quite a large following and they decided to branch out into a fashion brand.
It's estimated that social media platforms host around 10% of the illegal wildlife trade in the UK.
The expansion of the Internet has provided new opportunities for wildlife traffickers to reach a vast virtual marketplace,
where chances of detection are low and profits from selling endangered wildlife can be extremely high.
Oh, this is so strange.
Like so many different kinds of incredible animals.
I don't even know what some of the fur is.
What's this?
That's seal fur.
That's a seal. What's this one?
That's Wolf.
Is this a primate?
Yes. A Colobus monkey.
This looks like like a smaller cat.
Yeah, it would certainly be one of the smaller cat species, like a Geoffroy's Cat or an Ocelot.
And they certainly are used in the fur trade.
Would that mean that they need more individuals?
Yes, a lot more.
Fur is a huge industry in the UK.
In fact, each year we import around £75 million worth of fur.
It is, however, illegal to trade in clothing from endangered animals.
The only exception is for fur clothing that was made before 1947.
I honestly, though this one for me hits home the most.
Because it was literally my dream for years and years to see these animals in the
wild, and honestly never thought I had I would ever have the chance to do it.
And last year we went on an expedition up into the mountains of Tian Shan,
On the border of China and Kyrgyzstan.
And we saw them, two of them in the wild.
And this is just so sad because working with them, and learning from the Snow Leopard Trust and local people about how important these
animals are, And how endangered they are,this is just it feels like, it just feels like such an
insult. I didn't think we would see a coat made of Snow Leopards.
It kind of like it gives you a strange feeling.
It makes you, it makes me really sad.
It's such like an intense experience for me being in here.
And you do this kind of every day in, day in and day out.
Does it have an impact on you?
I try not to consider too much that the back story of these animals,
But obviously each of them was alive at some point in the past.
They they become so inanimate once they've reached this stage of their existence,
That I think that probably helps me to compartmentalize.
It could be quite upsetting when you think about the actual back story of some of these creatures.
But ultimately we have a job to do and we have an offender that needs to be brought to justice.
I think it's totally admirable how you manage to deal with
this, Because I know I couldn't do it.
This is, without a doubt, the strangest room I've ever been in, in my life.
I like to think, that I someone that's not very easily affected by things,
But this has definitely hit home more than I thought it would,
As I think many people would, had no idea just how big and diverse
the wildlife crime issue is in London.