Voodoo Market Reveals Wildlife Trafficking’s Grim Reality | National Geographic

So if you care about wildlife crime, you have to understand culturally how a country thinks about wildlife. You know, and, uh, one of the unique aspects of Togo is the voodoo is real and alive here. This fetish market is known around the world. They told me the first time all our animals are roadkill; they've died of natural causes. And of course, you don't really believe that, but you don't want to disbelieve it. You want to say, "Okay, there's a mix." There isn't the pain behind these animals. This is a cultural anthropological moment for me.

They've got dozens and dozens and dozens of white-faced owls, these beautiful little birds you might read about in Harry Potter. And now they're laid out. They're not laid out for the Togolese religious practitioners; they're laid out for tourists, like I was the first time I came. You know, they charge a fee as you come in, and they're recycling these animals.

When they weren't paying attention to me, I walked behind these rows into one of the little huts. Immediately, a boy came up to me carrying a live chameleon. I said, "Ah!" I just showed the smallest interest, and he pulled me over. He had a bucket full of live chameleons. I knew they were about to; they were going to kill those chameleons. I said, "What else do you have?" They pulled out boxes that people had been sitting on, covered with rags.

They pulled up the rags, full of tortoises about to be killed. There was a Pangolin pulled from a back room. The Pangolin was already dead, but not dead long. They kept it in the back room, which told me they knew that's a trafficked animal. It makes me wonder if there is ivory back there as well. This is one of the painful things about being a wildlife investigator: you learn the truth behind lots of things that have this sort of novelty.