Social media platforms are fuelling an illegal wildlife trade that is outpacing policing efforts, a major global review has found. A University of Cape Town researcher co-authored the study.
The study appears in Nature Reviews Biodiversity. Researchers found thousands of animal, plant and fungal species for sale on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Many of these species face extinction.
Researchers monitored online activity for six weeks in mid-2025. They found more than 1 600 primates for sale across the four platforms. Sellers increasingly trade birds, snakes, frogs and orchids using the same online channels.
Dr Annette Hübschle is the study’s only Africa-based co-author. She is the chief research officer and co-lead of the Global Risk Governance Programme in UCT’s faculty of law. Her contribution brings a Global South and community-centred perspective to a field that focuses on detection technology and enforcement.
“The online illegal wildlife trade is not simply a technology problem that can be engineered away,” said Hübschle. “And it represents a growing, evolving threat to biodiversity.”
Africa in the trade route
Africa features prominently in the trade routes the study documented. Between 2010 and 2021, traders moved roughly 800 000 African grey parrots internationally. Researchers monitored public Facebook accounts of exporters in Togo. They found more than 200 species for sale.
The review found that online trade spans the entire trafficking chain. Harvesters and intermediaries locate specimens through social media. Direct-to-consumer shipments then bypass large-scale smuggling networks.
A community-centred response
Hübschle argues that enforcement alone will not solve the problem. The study’s call to centre communities draws on her 2025 chapter in the Routledge Handbook of Wildlife Crime. The Global Risk Governance Programme at UCT developed the “harmscapes” framework, which the chapter extends.
The framework treats wildlife harm as something arising across diffuse, interconnected sites. It rejects the idea of discrete crimes to police. Instead, it asks who can act at each of those sites, including actors that state-led responses typically overlook.
“Much of the current response is enforcement-heavy and modelled on Global North regulatory systems,” said Hübschle. “But communities, local practitioners and frontline conservation actors are often the first to notice emerging code words, shifting routes and the unintended harms of punitive approaches.”
Lessons from the succulent Karoo
Hübschle’s fieldwork in the Northern and Western Cape offers a concrete illustration. It forms part of the Safeguarding Succulents project. International collectors have targeted Conophytum, a succulent genus, since 2019. Over three years, its illegal price collapsed by up to two orders of magnitude as more harvesters flooded the market.
Rather than ending the problem, the price collapse is pushing harvesting towards other plant genera and reptiles.
“On the ground, we’re seeing communities read these shifts in real time, and in some cases propose their own solutions, including access-and-benefit-sharing models, before formal policy catches up,” said Hübschle. “That local knowledge is exactly what a whole-of-society response needs to draw on, whether the trade is happening in a Cape Town Facebook group or a Succulent Karoo veld.”
Five strategies
The authors set out five complementary strategies. The first is AI-assisted monitoring and detection. The second is stronger platform policies and content moderation with independent audits. The third is whole-of-society coordination among technology companies, regulators, non-governmental organisations and affected communities. The fourth is demand-reduction campaigns that draw on behavioural science. The fifth is international policy frameworks. These include the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) and the EU’s Digital Services Act.
Lead author Professor Enrico Di Minin, from the University of Helsinki, said addressing the trade is “complex but not insurmountable”. Co-author Dr Neil D’Cruze, from Manchester Metropolitan University, said the harms mirror those of traditional wildlife trafficking. But they can unfold at greater speed and scale.
Gaps remain
The study identifies major gaps in the evidence base. Researchers seldom document online trade routes in the Global South. The study calls for research that better reflects the regions that wildlife trafficking affects most. Such work should also examine its consequences for biodiversity, conservation and public health.
For Hübschle, stopping illegal wildlife trade online will require more than taking down posts or closing accounts. The people who live alongside the targeted species must have a meaningful role in shaping the response.
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