Inside the Colorado warehouse filled with illegal wildlife products
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COMMERCE CITY, Colo. — Elisa Dahlberg sliced through packing tape and flung open a box the size of an Eastern Lowland Gorilla.
Inside lay dozens of purses made from caiman, stingray and other protected species, each containing a tag and evidence sticker.
Special agents seized the handbags from a South American smuggling operation, said Dahlberg, the lead biologist and collections manager at the National Wildlife Property Repository, located on the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge.
The warehouse is the final resting place for over 1.2 million illegal wildlife products confiscated during investigations, seized at ports of entry or abandoned by their owners.
Inside the warehouse, taxidermied lions, tigers and bears stand frozen in time. Cobra boots seem to hiss from the shelves. Bear teeth, lion claws and elephant ivory fill buckets.
Video: Cormac McCrimmon, Rocky Mountain PBS
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reports that 4,000 precious wildlife species still fall prey to trafficking every year. Illicit wildlife trade is valued between $7.8 billion and $10 billion per year, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society.
As climate change worsens, the UNODC warns that “Wildlife trafficking can disrupt delicate ecosystems and their functions, particularly undermining their ability to mitigate climate change.”
Originally housed alongside the National Wildlife Forensics Lab in Ashland, Oregon, the property repository moved to Denver in the 1990s. The building once housed vehicles used to clean up the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, which served as a chemical weapons plant during World War II.
Although not hermetically sealed, the building offers stable conditions to store items. Thieves attempted to rob the warehouse several years ago, said Dahlberg.
When employees at the National Wildlife Property Repository receive a shipment, they often don’t know the items’ backstories. Dahlberg and her team catalog and photograph the items, then record details in an electronic database. Next, employees place them on shelves organized by species.
Cowboy boots made from crocodile, cobra and python are the most common items.
“I think predominantly we see more fashion items geared towards women,” said Doni Sprague, a wildlife repository specialist, who’s worked at the facility for more than 30 years.
Sprauge said the items “aren’t her style.” But she speculates that, “for some people it’s a status symbol. Many of these items can be very valuable…Sometimes it's as simple as seeing someone in a magazine and thinking, hey, that that might look good on me.”
“Back in the early 60s, Jackie Kennedy was photographed wearing a leopard skin coat and the following year, the number of leopards that were hunted and used in the fur trade went up 110 percent,” said Sprauge.
Dahlberg thinks that attitudes towards exotic wildlife may be changing. She points to a number of young people who have recently donated ivory jewelry or carvings they inherited to the collection.
“They don't know what to do with it. They know it's illegal to buy, sell, trade, barter, so they reach out to us, as a means of legal abandonment,” said Dahlberg.
Workers at the repository destroy products if they have too many identical items, but the goal of saving items is for “education and outreach.”
The repository loans items to teachers and universities for demonstration. Items are also used to train law enforcement agents.
“People don’t realize the impact wildlife trafficking has,” said Dahlberg.
On tours, she likes to use the example of a jaguar jacket. By analyzing the pattern of the jacket, experts can determine that it took a minimum of five animals to make.
Dahlberg said that after 9 years working at the repository, she’s become “desensitized.”
“Items don't really impact you as much anymore,” she said.
She and Sprague prefer to see their work as giving the items “a second life.”
We use them to “tell the story of these species, tell what's happening to wildlife in the trade, and hope that by educating people when they come for tours, that that will have a positive impact in the future,” said Dahlberg.
The National Wildlife Property Repository offers public tours the first Friday of every month.
Type of story: News
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
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