Ivory destruction Despite efforts to destroy ivory, criminals are becoming more organised, ingenious and dangerous. "We have seen more and more organised crime networks moving into the wildlife trade," says Davyth Stewart from Interpol, the international intelligence agency. "Groups who have been traditionally involved in drug trafficking, fire arms and human trafficking are now moving onto wildlife." It's clearly not a fair match: conservationists pitted against criminal gangs. But the wildlife experts say it's a fight they have to take on. They have gathered at the Zoological Society of London to tackle how to halt the rapidly growing trade in animals. The backdrop to these crisis talks is bleak. Thousands of rhinos, elephants, tigers and others have been slaughtered, becoming part of an illegal market that's worth an estimated $19bn a year. Many criminals see it as low risk, high profit, says Mr Stewart. "There is a lower risk of apprehension, it's unfortunate but law enforcement has not invested the resources in attacking wildlife crime as it has in other crimes," he explains. "Even in courts the penalties are much lower. Just last year in Ireland, we saw two people arrested for smuggling rhino horns worth half a million euros. They received a 500-euro fine." Demand and supply John Sellar, the former chief of enforcement at Cites (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species), says the focus of the battle should be shifted away from conservation towards the issue of criminality. "It's about locking up the bad guys," he tells the conference.

Predators have roamed the planet for 500 million years. The earliest is thought to be some type of simple marine organism, a flatworm maybe or type of crustacean, perhaps a giant shrimp that feasted on ancient trilobites. Much later came the famous predatory dinosaurs such as T. rex, and later still large toothed mammals such as sabre toothed cats or modern wolves. But one or two hundred thousand years ago, the world’s most powerful predator arrived. Us. We lacked big teeth or sharp claws, huge tentacles or venomous bites. But we had intelligence, and the guile to produce tools and artificial weapons. And as we became ever better hunters we started harvesting animals on a great scale. We wiped out the passenger pigeon, the dodo, the great herds of North American bison. Last century we decimated great whale populations. Today the world’s fishing fleets routinely take more fish than scientists say is sustainable, leading to crashes in cod numbers for example, while people kill more large mammals in North America than all other causes put together. But out of our mass consumption of the world’s fauna appears a curious conundrum.