"Planet Killers," Season 2: Animal Traffickers in the Crosshairs

A pair of monkeys sold for €6,800, a young chimpanzee for €40,000… Bids scroll across the phone screen, accompanied by photos of animals locked in tiny cages. For the second season of the documentary series Planet Killers, dedicated to environmental crimes, investigative journalist Stéphane Malterre lifts the veil on primate trafficking in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A lucrative business encouraged by the proliferation on social media of videos of monkeys reduced to the state of pets in opulent villas in China, Thailand, and the Middle East.
Drawing on investigations conducted by NGOs specializing in the fight against the trafficking of protected animals in Africa, this shocking documentary takes as its starting point the seizure, in 2023, at a Togolese airport of a shipment of 40 monkeys, several of which belonged to endangered species. According to estimates, nearly 1,500 of them are illegally smuggled out of the country each year! This multi-million dollar market thrives on corruption and poverty.
Rare testimonies shed light on the various links in the trafficking chain: a poacher, father of ten children, admits to obeying the "law of the belly" ; a wealthy trafficker claims to work legally and to be an "animal protector" ; a senior official, suspected of having sold fake export permits, denies any involvement, particularly in the sale of four gorillas to a Chinese amusement park. Their aplomb and impunity are heartbreaking.
We feel the same anger mixed with disgust when watching the other two parts of the collection: The Tiger Cartel (by Paul Moreira and Stéphane Malterre), a suffocating dive into farms disguised as zoos in Thailand, where felines are raised like cattle and literally reduced to mush to make a supposedly miraculous cure; and The Horn Barons (by Claire Tesson), which reconstructs the hunt for Big Joe, the kingpin of rhino poaching in South Africa. Sensitive people should refrain.
La Croıx