The link between drug and animal trafficking in Mexico is becoming closer every day. Poachers and loggers are forced to work for the Sinaloa cartel or the Jalisco New Generation cartel (CJNG), who pay them in illegal drugs such as methamphetamine and fentanyl.
China’s insatiable thirst for species such as totoaba, sea cucumber and abalone has turned animal trafficking into a lucrative business, and one Mexico’s organized crime groups want to control. Mexican cartels are now delivering these species to Chinese traders, who in return provide the chemical precursors needed to make illegal drugs.
This task has been made easier by the Mexican government’s hands-off approach to the cartels and the fact the country’s environmental authorities are desperately underfunded. Organized crime expert Vanda Felbab-Brown has dissected this complex web in her latest investigation for the Brookings Institution, titled China-linked wildlife poaching and trafficking in Mexico.
The report explains that Mexico’s fishing and logging industries are increasingly being controlled by the cartels in order to supply Chinese demand.