US Wildlife Trade
Nearly all of the illegal wildlife products seized at U.S. ports of entry end up in one place—the National Wildlife Property Repository in Commerce City, Colorado.
In November 2013, I was invited to cover the government's effort to destroy its six-tonne ivory stockpile, dating back to the 1980s, in a stand against elephant poaching. Inside the repository, horrors still remain—rows of tiger heads with lifeless plastic stares, tables made from elephant feet, and even a mounted tiger fetus, ripped from its mother's womb.
Three years later, I returned, to document the often ignored trade in coastal species from Latin America and the Caribbean for Hakai Magazine.
