Pet Cheetah Trafficking: An Overview
Credit: International Fund for Animal Warfare, Benjamin Wiacek
Wildlife crime can take an immeasurable number of forms: rhino horn trade, orchid smuggling, illegal fishing, or pet cheetah trafficking. This latter criminal activity is the main cause of the extinction threat that hangs over cheetahs all around the world. According to the IUCN Red List, cheetahs are “vulnerable” in Africa, and the few remaining animals on the high plateaus of Iran even reached the “critically endangered” status. Over the last hundred years, the cheetah population in the wild has plummeted by 93%, from 100.000 specimens in the early 20th century to only 7.000 today.
Customs in Berbera or Hargeisa in Somaliland already seized cheetah’s claws, teeth, or hides, but the cheetah body parts market is marginal. Cheetahs are preferred as purring fawns. If the fashion of owning a cheetah on a leash is becoming more popular with the influence of social media, it is not only a 21st-century fad. More than 1.500 years before our era, Pharaoh Thutmose III was offered a domesticated cheetah by a Nubian delegation as a sign of respect and honour. In Florence, Italy, a Renaissance fresco from the 16th century shows a young Julian de Medici riding a horse with a cheetah trotting quietly in his wake. Much more recently, the famous cabaret dancer and resistance fighter Josephine Baker was famous for walking her pet cheetah Chiquita along the Champs-Elysées in Paris. In these three examples, just like for the majority of pet cheetah owners today, having such an animal is a matter of status, a demonstration of power and money through a domesticated dangerous beast worth thousands of dollars.
Sadly, the life expectancy of pet cheetahs is 50-60% less than their wild counterparts. Worse, most of the cubs smuggled from the wild die on their way up to their buyer’s place. According to the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF), the chances of survival for cubs do not exceed 30-40%. Regardless of animal welfare, the rate of trafficked cheetahs is still on the rise: between 2009 and 2019 around 3.600 animals have been seized by border patrols in Eastern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula altogether. These figures, showing no signs of abating during the COVID-19 crisis despite worldwide lockdowns, are just a glimpse of the extent of this criminal activity.
Critical law enforcement lacks the capacities
Worth around $20 billion a year, wildlife crimes are the fourth most lucrative illicit market after human trafficking, arms, and drug smuggling. But serious crimes often converge. Take the case of Cadbi Xayawaan, a well-known bandit and cheetah smuggler operating between Somaliland and Yemen. Even if the police units heard about his criminal doings from 2014, they were only able to parrot him seven years later, in 2021, thanks to a raid on foot. The Cadbi Xayawaan trial is one of the first in Somaliland, where illegal wildlife trade was mentioned as a forefront crime, on the same level as arms smuggling.
Despite international and local efforts, originating or transiting countries have very little capacity to tackle pet cheetah trafficking. Courts in Eastern Africa are crumbling under tons of paperwork and delayed cases waiting for prosecution. For example, Moazu Kromah, “Kampala man”, and three of his associates were arrested in February 2017 by the Ugandan Wildlife Authority together with 437 pieces of smuggled ivory. Their trial took place in Southern New York City, USA, four years later in 2021. An INTERPOL report mentioned that Moazu Kromah offered a large cash bribe to Ugandan officials to make his case disappear from the records - corruption being one of the main reasons the case has been transferred to the USA.
Whether it be Moazu Kromah’s case in Uganda, or Cadbi Xayawaan’s in Somaliland, inherent problems due to unstable politics and governance are systemic across Sub-Saharan Africa, especially in those countries concerned with pet cheetah trafficking. According to the Global Peace Index, Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Sudan, South Sudan, and Yemen on the other side of the Red Sea are amongst the most precarious States in terms of human development, They also have to deal with some of the highest crime rates of the world. The self-proclaimed Republic of Somaliland could have been an exception, but this little territory of the African Horn is still not officially recognised as a ‘State’ by the international community. Consequently, despite its many efforts in terms of transparency and both economic and human development, Somaliland is excluded from almost all international aid programs.
Besides, pet cheetah trafficking is not a priority for the countries we have just mentioned. When a smuggling event is reported to the authorities, it is often too late for them to intervene efficiently: the cheetah is likely to be dying if not already dead, and the bandit can easily run away by the time law enforcement units get in the field. (Not speaking about the potentiality that law enforcement units could have already taken a bribe from criminals to give their laissez-passer).
Low-cost capacity building: preventive mapping
If deterring procedures are lacking, some countries have already come up with preventive capacity building. In Kenya for instance, community engagement projects like the “Rural Stove West Kenya”, or “Scat Dogs Helping Cheetah” both held by the NGO Action for Cheetah in Kenya led to significant results in reducing poverty, political instabilities and cheetah trafficking activities altogether.
CCF on its side is developing a wildlife trafficking database to centralise all data related to the trafficking of cheetahs in Somaliland. The project is in discussion to be extended in Ethiopia. This database is the first centralised online platform dedicated to crime. As Somaliland authorities already announced, this could be used as a model for other crime-related databases in the future. Preventive capacity building and especially data and intelligence systems are low-cost options against crime. They require small means as regards to deterrence actions. As CCF does in Somaliland, collecting data will enable the local authorities to map the crime on their territories and act more precisely on hot points, with smaller but more efficient capacities on the ground.
Gathering data, deducing, producing, framing trends from machine learning, and mapping intertwined processes from forensics evidence and OSINT analyses, require some training. As one of its core activities, the Wildlife Forensics Fund (WFF) raises funds for rangers and provides them with scholarships and courses at the Wildlife Forensics Academy in Cape Town, South Africa. WFF also works closely with the Nature FIRST European Project to prevent the decline of biodiversity, thanks to data-driven technologies and on-site forensic observations.
Data and intelligence response could make a real difference in pet cheetah trafficking in the Horn of Africa. If thought at a regional or international level, this could emancipate non-state actors like Somaliland and conservation NGOs like CCF or ACK to better shape their actions to tackle this specific criminal activity.
WFF recognises the need for advanced forensic knowledge to combat wildlife crime and illegal wildlife trafficking. By combining community building, fundraising, and awareness-raising efforts, we protect our planet's wildlife from the threats posed by organised crime. Visit our projects page to learn more about our impactful work and become a contributor to our cause today by donating to the project of your choice.