Voodoo Market Reveals Wildlife Trafficking’s Grim Reality | National Geographic

so if you care about wildlife crime you
have to understand culturally how a
country thinks about wildlife you know
and one of the unique aspects of togo is
that voodoo is real and alive here and
this fetish market is known around the
world they told me the first time all
our animals are roadkill they’ve died of
natural causes and of course you don’t
really believe that but you don’t want
to disbelieve it you want to say okay
there’s some mix there isn’t the pain
behind these animals this is a cultural
anthropological moment for me and
they’ve got dozens and dozens and dozens
of white face towels these beautiful
little birds you might read how the
Beatrix Potter and now they’re laid out
they’re not laid out for the togolese
religious practitioners they’re laid out
for tourists like I was the first time I
came you know they charge a fee as you
come in and they’re recycling these
animals when they weren’t paying
attention to me I walk behind these rows
into one of the little huts and
immediately a boy came up to me carrying
a live chameleon and I said oh I just
showed the smallest interest and he
pulled me over and he had a bucket full
of live chameleons now I knew that they
were about that they were gonna kill
those chameleons I said what else do you
have they pulled out there were boxes
that people had been sitting on covered
with rags pulled up the rags full of
tortoises about to be killed
there was a Pangolin pulled from a
backroom Pangolin was already dead but
not dead long and they kept it in the
back room which told me they knew that’s
a trafficked animal
it makes me wonder if there is an ivory
bit back there as well this is one of
the painful things about being a
wildlife investigator you’ve learned the
truth behind lots of things that have
this sort of novelty