Smuggle Bunny
Wildlife Smuggler
He ingeniously and brazenly smuggles live endangered animals inside stuffed toys, specializing in baby animals for the illegal pet trade. His toy of choice is the bunny. Tragically, many of these animals die in transit.
He also profits from trips to Asia, smuggling ivory for carved statues and dried shark fins for soup served at high-end celebrations. This trade is devastating shark populations. Shark finning is especially cruel: fishermen slice off a shark’s fins and throw the animal back into the ocean alive, where it cannot swim and slowly dies.
To meet demand for traditional medicines—many of which have no scientific basis—he traffics rhino horn, tiger bones (primarily calcium), and bear paws and gallbladders. These practices are driving already vulnerable species toward extinction.
Rhino horn, which can sell for more than its weight in gold, is made of keratin—the same substance as human fingernails. Animals are being killed for a material with no proven medicinal benefit.
Pangolins, the most trafficked mammals in the world, are hunted for both their meat and their scales. Like rhino horn, these scales are made of keratin and have no medicinal value.
