#WildEye

Mapping Wildlife Crime

In early 2019, South Africa-based Oxpeckers Investigative Environmental Journalism launched #WildEye, a digital GeoJournalism tool that collects and shares data on legal interventions against wildlife trafficking in Europe. In May 2020, with global attention focused on the wildlife trade as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, they expanded that tool to cover Asia.

Developed by journalists for journalists, #WildEye is a digital GeoJournalism tool that maps data on seizures, arrests, court cases and convictions. The platform also hosts a growing dossier of investigative reporting that either uses the data or is otherwise related to wildlife crime in Asia and Europe.

#WildEye builds on Oxpeckers' Rhino Poachers Court Cases tracker, which documents prosecutions and court cases across Southern Africa involving alleged rhino poachers. These tools all aggregate publicly available data to make it easily accessible for use by journalists, policymakers and the general public.

Use #WildEye to track seizures, arrests, court cases & convictions across Europe and Asia. The data is anchored in our dossier of investigations below.

Using alerts, search filters, tags, geolocation and custom online map-making, these trackers are open-source tools, freely available to those who want to use and share them.

A community-driven tool, #WildEye allows users to request and share data and to suggest stories that are linked to wildlife crime. If you would like to know about how to use #WildEye for your stories and investigations, read through the Guide for Journalists, available here.

Oxpeckers is continuously updating and managing the #WildEye data, based in part on input from users. We welcome any guidance, tips and contact information that could be helpful to our development and data-collection efforts.