Investing in Innovation to Fight Wildlife Trafficking
For World Wildlife Day 2025, the global conversation is focused on Wildlife Conservation Finance: Investing in People and Planet. The world’s biodiversity is priceless, but conserving it comes at a cost. Billions of dollars are needed each year to close the global wildlife conservation finance gap — a gap that must be bridged to ensure the survival of species and the ecosystems that sustain us all.
At APOPO we believe that investing in innovation is key to conservation success. For more than 25 years, we have trained scent-detection animals to tackle some of the world’s most pressing challenges. From detecting landmines to diagnosing tuberculosis, our African giant pouched rats — known as HeroRATs — have proven their ability to deliver life-saving results in cost-effective ways.
Now, we are applying this same innovative approach to combating illegal wildlife trade, a multi-billion dollar industry that threatens biodiversity worldwide and often funds organized crime. By training rats to detect trafficked wildlife products, we are developing a low-cost, scalable solution that could support conservation law enforcement and help protect endangered species. However, recent news of the termination of USAID-funded projects worldwide — has created an additional funding gap for conservation initiatives like ours, making it even more urgent to explore alternative ways to finance wildlife protection efforts.
The Need for Cost-Effective Wildlife Protection
Wildlife trafficking is a lucrative black-market industry that fuels organized crime and devastates species populations. Authorities face enormous challenges in detecting illegal shipments, as smugglers use increasingly sophisticated methods to hide contraband. Sea ports and airports process thousands of containers and bags daily, making thorough screening time-consuming, expensive, and difficult.
Current detection methods, such as sniffer dogs and scanners, are highly effective but costly to maintain. APOPO’s Wildlife Detection Rats, if fully developed and deployed, could enhance these efforts at a fraction of the cost. The rats are fast, efficient, and require minimal resources to train and operate. By investing in their development, we are working toward a financially sustainable, scalable solution that could contribute to reducing the wildlife conservation finance gap.
A Research Program With Promising Results
APOPO has been developing its Wildlife Detection Rats since 2020, refining their training and testing their ability to detect pangolin scales, elephant ivory, and rhino horn.
- In 2023, our first generation of trained rats was translocated to Dar es Salaam for testing in a seaport environment, achieving a detection rate of 83 percent.
- In 2024, a second generation of rats was trained using improved protocols and achieved an increased detection rate of 87 percent.
Dr. Eduardo Reynoso-Cruz, the Project Lead, explained, “I strongly believed that our rats could make a big impact on the detection of illegal wildlife goods. What impresses me the most is that precision can be increased simply by improving our training protocols. A four percent increase may not seem like much, but every detection counts in the fight against wildlife crime.”
In 2024, our rats trained at a Tanzanian Airport for the first time, an important step toward preparing them for deployment in real-world settings.
A Smart Investment for Conservation
The development of APOPO’s Wildlife Detection Rats is part of a larger movement toward innovative, cost-effective solutions for conservation. If successfully implemented, APOPO’s rats could:
- Reduce costs by complementing existing detection methods.
- Increase efficiency by screening large volumes of cargo quickly.
- Provide a scalable solution for countries struggling with limited enforcement resources.
Eduardo emphasized, “Our rats are not here to replace anybody. We want to team up with sniffer dogs and scanner technologies to improve the detection of illegal wildlife items, reduce contraband, and expand our work to other countries facing similar problems.”
Expanding Research to Protect Giraffes
As part of our commitment to innovative conservation, APOPO recently received a grant from the Anne Innis Dagg Foundation to expand our detection research to include giraffe products.
Giraffe populations have declined by 40 percent in the past 30 years, and are listed as vulnerable to extinction on the IUCN red list. The tallest animal on land used to roam 28 African countries, but Giraffe are now extinct in 7 African countries. Habitat loss and fragmentation as well as poaching are believed to be significant factors in this decline. However, due to legal loopholes and limited data, the full scale of the giraffe trade remains unclear. Giraffe bone is sometimes used as a substitute for ivory, while giraffe hide and hair are traded for leather goods and souvenirs.
By training APOPO’s wildlife detection rats to detect giraffe bone, hide, and hair, we aim to gather critical data that could support stronger legal protections and better conservation funding strategies.
Financing the Future of Wildlife Conservation
APOPO’s Wildlife Detection Rats demonstrate how strategic investments in research and innovation can create sustainable conservation solutions. However, funding remains a challenge.
The recent US State Department order halting USAID-funded projects worldwide — including APOPO’s Wildlife Detection Rats program — demonstrates the fragility of conservation funding. This situation highlights the urgent need for varied funding mechanisms to ensure that cost-effective, high-impact solutions can be developed and deployed in the most cost-effective way possible.
Join the Conversation: How Can We Better Finance Conservation?
As the World Wildlife Day website invites us to reflect, this year is an opportunity to discuss what is working in conservation finance, what is not, and how we can improve funding for wildlife conservation efforts. How can we close the conservation finance gap? What models are working? How can we make low-cost, high-impact solutions like APOPO’s Wildlife Detection Rats a reality?
APOPO is committed to expanding partnerships, refining our research, and advancing innovative conservation technology. By supporting our work, you can help:
- Fund research to improve detection training.
- Support testing in real-world environments.
- Contribute to cost-effective solutions for combating wildlife crime.
Investing in conservation is investing in the future of wildlife and the ecosystems that sustain us all. Let’s work together to ensure that financial innovation and technological advancements go hand in hand to protect biodiversity for generations to come.
