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Every two weeks, we come to you with an insider’s look at the world of wildlife crime and exploitation. If you’re reading this, you’re a part of a rare club willing to bear witness to difficult truths that others would rather ignore. You are WIRE’s strongest supporters, and we don’t take that for granted. Thank you.
The investigations we report often begin quietly: a vague tip, a paperwork discrepancy, an off-the-record source. Stories unfold slowly. We must dig through thousands of documents, make cold calls, and earn the trust of sources who have every reason to stay silent. A single project can span the globe and up to a year or longer. And yet, most of this work is invisible, tucked into a polished package.
The reality is that investigative journalism is expensive, time-consuming, and risky. Independent, nonprofit investigative journalism—about wildlife, no less—is even more so, requiring travel to remote locations, the tracking of elusive subjects, and navigating the security risks of reporting on organized criminal networks.
Our vision for WIRE is to publish four to six major investigations every year. This is the cadence we believe will make the devastating consequences of industrial-scale exploitation of wild animals impossible to ignore. Editor-in-Chief Rene, Editorial Director Ollie, and I have foregone jobs with steady paychecks and benefits to build WIRE from scratch because we believe this work is too important to delay. But as of now, with our current funding, we can produce only one, or at most two, investigative projects each year.
Friends: The challenges are too urgent to proceed at this pace. When crimes against nature stay buried, species disappear, animals suffer, and the ecosystems we all rely on disintegrate. The criminals and profiteers behind these abuses must not get away with it. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and investigative journalism is that sunlight.
WIRE has the expertise, the courage, the will—and the stories. You can provide the fuel to make them possible.
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