American Airlines Implements Comprehensive Strategy To Combat Wildlife Smuggling and Raise Awareness

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NORTHAMPTON, MA / ACCESSWIRE / September 18, 2024 / American Airlines
Originally published in American Airlines' 2023 Sustainability Report

Expanding Our Commitment to Prevent Illegal Trafficking of Wildlife

In 2022, American became the first U.S. airline to join the Transport Taskforce of United for Wildlife, and, in 2023, we continued to implement our commitments outlined in the Buckingham Palace Declaration.

This organization, established by the Royal Foundation of the Prince and Princess of Wales, is working to protect elephants, rhinos, monkeys, birds, insects, reptiles and other endangered species, including plants, from the illegal wildlife trade that is pushing them toward extinction. This global criminal enterprise is worth an estimated $20 billion annually, with poachers and traffickers trading in a wide variety of endangered wildlife and wildlife body parts, generally for sale as trophies or for purported medicinal uses. Their activities are also linked to money laundering as well as the trafficking of drugs and weapons.

American has pledged to increase awareness among team members regarding the nature, scale and consequences of these activities. In 2023, we began our journey by working to understand our exposure to wildlife trafficking. Through an intensive analysis of our global network and the smuggling routes of animal products, we developed a risk assessment and used it to craft our strategy. It highlights specific regions, routes and hotspots within our network that pose high risks of smuggling.

The global nature of our Cargo operation and its significant presence in areas at risk of wildlife trafficking made it a logical choice for launching this strategy. Cargo served more than 21,000 unique origin and destination pairs in 2023. Highest-volume stations are spread throughout the world, including London, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Dallas-Fort Worth, Miami and Los Angeles.

We have made wildlife awareness training a requirement for frontline Cargo team members, and over 95% of them completed it in 2023. We began the process of expanding training to other teams as well. We also worked to increase awareness among Cargo team members by distributing informational posters outlining common red flags and trafficking methods for display in more than 40 Cargo stations worldwide.

We also worked closely with our Corporate Security department to develop new channels for reporting suspected trafficking incidents. And to raise awareness, our Living Green Employee Business Resource Group sponsored events on this topic.