The World Has a Chance to Make the Wild Animal Trade More Humane
The body that regulates wildlife trade is taking steps to improve the treatment of animals captured and sold around the globe.
They could sense how bad it was from the stench of decay and putrefying flesh that emanated from the warehouse.
“We found 20,000 more animals than anticipated,” says Clifford Warwick, a reptile biologist and medical scientist based in England. Known for his work on preventing zoonoses—diseases spread from wildlife to humans—Warwick had been called in at the eleventh hour by the Texas Department of State Health Services to join a rescue team of veterinarians, biologists, and experienced animal handlers.
Following a tip-off, Texas state authorities had served the owner of the U.S. Global Exotics (USGE) warehouse in Arlington, Texas, with a warrant and secured the building, taping it off as a crime scene.
The team had 16 hours—until midnight, when the
