Over 1,800 great apes were seized from an illicit live traffic that went undetected for over a decade but is now confirmed through the Apes Seizure Database that was launched at the 17th Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) Conference of the Parties on 29 September in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Seizure records in the database date back to 2005, and include any removal of great apes from unlawful situations. Seizures were recorded in 23 nations, almost half of which were non-range States from Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

Over 90 percent of all seizures occurred within national borders and were therefore not recorded in widely used illegal trade databases managed by the CITES and other regulatory agencies. As a result, the trade in endangered and critically endangered great apes was dramatically under-reported.

The Apes Seizure Database was created by the Great Apes Survival Partnership (GRASP), in collaboration with the United Nations Environment -World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC). Its seizure data comes from GRASP’s broad alliance of 105 national governments, research institutions, conservation organizations and United Nations agencies, which was then verified by a technical advisory group.

“Any illegal trade in great apes — whether it crosses international borders or not — needs to be considered a very real threat to the survival of these endangered species,” said UN Environment executive director Erik Solheim. “I visited Borneo recently and saw for myself the incredible pressure orangutans are under from habitat loss, and African apes are equally stressed. Illegal trade can only push them all that much closer to extinction, and it needs to be stopped.”

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