David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation

Countless wildlife species are being driven towards extinction by habitat loss and the insatiable consumer demand for their body parts. ACAP directly addresses the problem in the consumer countries by raising public awareness, making consumption unacceptable, encouraging Asian conservation efforts and providing quality education materials. ACAP's hard-hitting adverts featuring the message 'When the Buying Stops, The Killing Can Too' , are reaching a weekly audiences of well over 1 billion viewers across Asia.

ACAP has had an unparalleled impact on consumers of wildlife products around the world. 78% of people in Taiwan, where the campaign was launched in the early 1990s, who had seen ACAP's messages vowed never to consume endangered species products again and Thailand's campaign against shark fin soup saw a 40% reduction in consumption in just three months. Nearly 100 celebrities and sporting heroes from around the world have supported ACAP by giving their time freely and recording powerful hard-hitting messages, including ACAP’s International Ambassador Jackie Chan, Hollywood icons Harrison Ford, Ralph Fiennes, Sir Ben Kingsley and Minnie Driver, Oscar winning director Ang Lee, footballing legend Gary Lineker and cricketing legends and Bollywood stars for the India chapter, including Sachin Tendulkar and Amitabh Bachchan. ACAP's media partners now include some of the most watched channels in the world including the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet, CNN, Star TV, National Geographic and Bloomberg.

Most recent focus has been in China – the world’s largest consumer of wildlife – estimated at 40% of the world’s illegal wildlife trade. Approximately 250 million newly wealthy urban Chinese are driving this trade with another 250 million set to enter the marketplace over the next decade as the country’s economy continues its rapid growth. Without curbing this demand the poaching and illegal trade in wildlife will not just continue, it will grow. Exactly like the illegal trade in narcotics, with such strong demand, anti-poaching operations, law enforcement and international regulation alone will not be able to protect wildlife in its natural habitat. A monumental challenge faced ACAP’s team – but the campaign has gone from strength to strength, recruiting many of the country’s leading stars of sports, entertainment and business. WildAid has been able to secure the first ever pro-bono broadcast deals (for a foreign NGO) with the State Television network CCTV, including the main 1,2,4,6,7, sport and Children’s channels – a similar achievement to securing blanket coverage on the BBC networks, but on a much, much larger scale. Alongside traditional broadcast, the messages DSWF has helped to support have also been distributed across an unparalleled network of pro-bono supporters. For example, they are seen over 200,000 times a day in 3,500 Shanghai taxis. Our partnership with Air Media reaches a key target audience of wealthy air passengers in 50 airports and 10 airlines, hitting 93% of China’s air traffic on 23,000 screens. In Beijing, 9,000 monitors carry our messages 60 times each day - reaching an estimated 10-20 million people each week. China’s largest and most important internet providers such as Tencent and Sina.com have collaborated to bring the campaign to tens of millions of users. The list of pro-bono partners continues to grow and our campaign, using the mechanisms and approach taken by the world’s leading companies to sell us products, has been turned to good effect to stop people buying endangered wildlife.

The numbers prove that the campaign is starting to work.

Prior to a major push before and during the Beijing Olympic Games, WildAid conducted a survey of 24,000 people in 16 cities, asking about consumption habits, attitudes to wildlife and questions to identify what would stop people consuming. The survey targeted many of the most threatened species such as tiger, elephant and rhino, but also sharks, as the market for shark fin soup had exploded in China with 70 million killed each year to satisfy demand. We found that 35.1% surveyed consumed shark fin of which 76.3% didn’t know it came from sharks (the Chinese name for shark fin soup being, Yuchi or“fish wing”).

For over four years ACAP recruited China’s leading athletes and with them world record holders and Olympic gold medallists. In the run-up to the Games the messages were saturating media, even the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games was showing our filmed messages on its website.

The results were conclusive.

WildAid hired one of the best survey companies, used by many of the blue-chip brands, to test the impact of ACAP. Of those surveyed 55% said they had seen and remembered the campaign and of these 94% said it had made them more aware and had impact, 82% said they had stopped eating shark fin soup and 89% said it should be banned or regulated.

ACAP’s focus is now to build on these remarkable results and entrench new attitudes that shun the consumption of wildlife. It can work, not as the solution, but as part of it. There is still so much more we must do, building on the work for sharks, while making sure there is a permanent ban on the trade in tiger parts and products in China; stopping the illegal trade in ivory and curbing the Chinese market for it; reducing demand for reptiles and birds, for rhino horn, bear parts and countless other species.

ACAP has never paid any of the supporting stars; all broadcast partners give their airtime for free, productions are made at a fraction of their true cost. Every pound, dollar or euro given to this campaign has been able to leverage hundreds, if not thousands more in pro-bono support.