House of horrors: inside the US wildlife repository photo essay

Photographer Matthew Staver and writer Oliver Milman visited the US National Wildlife Property Repository, where illegal wildlife products, from stuffed tigers to worked ivory, are stored and counted If the US had a national house of horrors, it would probably be the federal government compound that lies on the fringes of Denver, Colorado, incongruously set within a wildlife reserve where bison languorously dawdle against a backdrop of the snow-crowned Rockies. TheNational Wildlife Property Repository, operated by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), is a warehouse of the macabre. Its a Noahs ark of protected deceased biodiversity that smugglers attempted to get into the US before being caught by FWS staff at airports and ports. There are about 1.5m items at the repository, with approximately 200 specimens arriving each week for storage and education purposes. This is just a thimbleful, just one speck of what comes into one port in one year, and it doesnt even include live animals imported to be pets, says Coleen Schaefer, the repositorys supervisor.

A consumer nation The live animals invariably end up in the hands of collectors or those who wish to hold domestic safaris the number of tigers in Texas, held for myriad purposes, nowrivals that of the wild population in Asia. Schaefer has just two members of staff to receive and catalogue the array of animal parts at the repository. Resources to catch smugglers are also stretched at American ports and airports. And the situation could deteriorate further the Trump administration hasrequested (pdf) that the FWS budget be cut next year, resulting in more than 300 staff losing their jobs. As crime syndicates change, so does the type of smuggled products. Staff have recently noticed an influx of ivory hacked from juvenile elephants as poachers struggle to find enough full-grown adults to meet demand.

To read more of this series, go to ourElephant Conservation page.

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