An analysis of illegal wildlife trade with the aid of social media and prevention strategies.

The drastic reduction of the wildlife populace indicates the true scale of illicit trade in wildlife. The traffickers emerged in the form of organized crime and threaten the survivability of several species across the world. Developing countries like India cannot be able to enforce the laws strongly to eradicate illegal wildlife trade. The regulations are poorly communicated and executed. The legalization varies from nation to nation. The political influences also affect the investigations of IWT. The traffickers misuse technology and sell illegal wildlife products in the pseudo name. This study investigates the role of social media platform in analyzing the illegal wildlife trade (IWT) and also suggest prevention strategies to conserve the wildlife environment. The research design is exploratory and descriptive. The research performs a quantitative analysis using the SPSS version 23 software package, through reports generated by the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB). The report derived from the operation WILDNET is used to gather the data of cases registered through various social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp. The present study adopts secondary data collection to fetch data relating to the prevalence of IWT throughout India. Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, and ANOVA tests are performed in the research. The outcomes of the study revealed the prevalence of IWT across India and the role of social media in identifying wildlife traffickers. Furthermore, the study concludes that the digital platform has aided in increasing awareness to conserve endangered species throughout the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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