For the Love of Wildlife was the driver behind the Australian ban on the importation of lion trophies and body parts as a direct response to the cruel and barbaric industry of captive breeding and canned hunting of Africa's lions - lions bred for the bullet for trophy hunters and the lion bone trade. A global first with France and the Netherlands following our lead with the US implementing strict import laws.
We continue working with the Australian Government in closing the unregulated domestic trade in elephant ivory and rhino horn. Hosting Australia's first ivory and rhino horn crush event in Melbourne #MelbourneCrush, triggering the Parliamentary Inquiry in Law Enforcement Parliamentary Inquiry with Minister Sussan Ley announcing Australia will close it's domestic markets at CITES CoP18 in Geneva in August 2019.
The evidence presented at the inquiry has taken our focus to the legal trade in wildlife with the current system 'unfit for purpose', allowing illegal wildlife items to be easily laundered through legal markets. We are trading wildlife into extinction with governments and large NGO's knowing we are failing endangered species, their addiction to the 'business as usual' model, moving glacially slow as if wildlife has time on its side. With more than 36,000 species listed and the lack of urgency demonstrated to the crisis requires a new approach. As a start, we have called on signatory countries for a comprehensive review of the CITES trade body (Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species in Wild Flora and Fauna) which has only been reviewed once since it was formed in the 70's and that was 25 years ago. The legal trade in endangered species is estimated at around US$320,000 billion a year - read that again, US$320 billion a year and is considered the second biggest contributor to the extinction crisis.
Working from the top down with law makers, policy and Government we intend to create significant change in the protection and preservation of wildlife.