By Josef Job G. Raymundo, Emerson Y. Sy, and Serene C.L. Chng

The Philippines has a rich hornbill diversity, but many species are found in a restricted range and threatened by habitat loss, hunting for wild meat and cultural objects, and the live bird trade.

This threat is reinforced by the discovery of 143 live hornbills from nine taxa for sale online from 2018-2022, reported in Farmers of the Forest in Cages: The Online Trade of Hornbills in the Philippines.

While the Luzon Tarictic Hornbill was the most recorded species in the study (73% of all individuals), five Endangered Visayas Tarictic Hornbill Penelopides panini were also offered for sale.

Two-thirds of traders recorded were in central Luzon and likely sourced wild hornbills within or from nearby provinces, said the report authors.

Seizure records during the same period showed a further 66 hornbills seized in 24 incidents.

TRAFFIC, Southeast Asia Regional Office, Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia, 2023. 24p.

By Emerson Y. Sy

The illegal wildlife trade is one of the most lucrative transnational crimes in the world. Numerous wildlife are threatened with extinction due to overexploitation for food, medicine, and as pets. Although it is difficult to quantify the illegal wildlife trade due to its mostly clandestine nature, analyzing seizure data can indicate its magnitude. Wildlife seizure records from the DENR, PCSDS, and other sources for the period 2010–2019 were collated and analyzed to identify species threatened by the illegal wildlife trade, hotspots, and trafficking routes. The 10-year seizure dataset involved 511 incidents, 283 taxa, and 44,647 wildlife individuals. Reptiles (n = 16,237 individuals) and birds (n = 6,042) were the top seized live wildlife, while pangolin scales (>2,100 kg) had the most quantity and seizure frequency among derivatives. Intervention policies on the key source, transit, and destination locations were proposed to address illegal wildlife trade in the country.

Manila: USAID Philippines, 2021. 56p.

By Emerson Y. Sy, Josef Job G. Raymundo, Serene C.L. Chng

A new TRAFFIC study recorded more than 800 Indonesian birds¹ for sale online in the Philippines between January 2018 and December 2019. Since the survey, all 20 of the original groups have been deactivated by Facebook, but surveillance by the authors in January 2022 found 144 new active groups offering various Indonesian species for sale, which continues to date. Almost 1,300 Indonesian birds of at least 28 species were also confiscated from illegal trade in the Philippines between 2010 and 2020, according to the report Farmed or Poached? The trade of live Indonesian Bird Species in the Philippines. Scrutiny of international trade records uncovered discrepancies: a majority of the Indonesian bird species listed on CITES² exported from the Philippines had questionable or no records of legal import into the Philippines. The records show that the Philippines had severely underreported their imports of Indonesian bird species compared to the numbers reported by exporters. In some cases, the export of Indonesian birds from the Philippines took place before the first reported legal importation.

Selangor, Malaysia , TRAFFIC Southeast Asia Regional Office, 2022. 55p.