Tomorrow the UK government hosts the London Conference on the Illegal Wildlife Trade, hoping to secure political commitment from governments around the globe to fight the issue. Kathleen Dunn and guests investigate this multi-billion-dollar illegal industry and what’s being done to stop it.

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The global trade in illegal wildlife has seen an unprecedented spike in the past two decades, and the figures are frightening: According to some estimates, 100 elephants are slaughtered each day for their tusks, more than 100 million sharks are killed for their fins each year and rhino poaching increased by 5,000 percent between 2007 and 2012.

Another sobering statistic tells us that today, there are more Bengalese tigers in Texas than in the Bay of Bengal.

Since the 1990s, the illegal trade in animals and animal parts has doubled to a $10 billion-a-year industry. The World Wildlife Fund calls it…