Earth League International

Our organization aims to increase the disruption and interdiction of the illegal wildlife trade, strengthen investigative and enforcement functions, enhance prosecutorial and judicial capacity, and develop worldwide information sharing through collaboration, training, and tools to combat wildlife trafficking. We aim to reduce the ability of criminal groups to carry out and profit from poaching and trafficking of protected species and their body parts originating from or transiting across Asia, South America, and the United States.

We need The Elevate Prize, not only for funding purposes but to enter into a community of passionate organizations that want to push each others' initiatives forward. In other words, we are applying to The Elevate Prize in order to increase visibility for our work to increase engagement and develop a larger platform in order to educate and bring awareness to the public eye. 

I am applying on behalf of Earth League International's Founder and Executive Director, Andrea Crosta. 

Andrea has over 30 years of experience in conservation projects around the world. As an entrepreneur in 1998 he founded ‘Think Italy’, among the very first e-commerce start-ups in Italy.

He is among the founding members of Wildlife Justice Commission, The Africa Conservancy Foundation, and the creator, project manager of WildLeaks. 

Andrea is among the main protagonists of the Netflix’s documentary ‘The Ivory Game’ and of the NatGeo documentary ‘Sea of Shadows‘. He is the co-author of the first investigation into ivory trafficking and terrorism (2010-2012), which changed forever the narrative around the issue of elephant poaching and ivory trafficking: “Africa’s White Gold of Jihad: al-Shabaab and Conflict Ivory”.

He is a Fellow of The Explorers Club.

He holds a Master’s Degree in Natural Sciences, a Master’s Degree in Business & Innovation and a BSc in Psychology.

Earth League International (ELI) is an innovative NGO that fights environmental/wildlife crime by merging the worlds of conservation, intelligence, analysis, whistleblowing, and media production.

At its core, ELI applies professional intelligence expertise to disrupt the proliferation of environmental/wildlife crime around the world. We research and investigate illegal supply chains and target transnational criminal organizations, traffickers, investors, and corrupt government officials. Intelligence is the knowledge – ideally the foreknowledge – that leads to the understanding of criminal network systems which is vitally important for our partners, and governmental authorities to identify points of interdiction, to operationally disrupt the criminal systems, and to safeguard people and wildlife. The intelligence-led approach is needed to integrate the more traditional “reactive” conservation models with a more proactive, impactful, and disruptive approach.

Our team and network of collaborators include professionals who have been working in the intelligence and investigation fields for decades, including the FBI, CIA, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence/National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

Earth League International, a fact-finding organization, accelerates justice and operates at the nexus of civil society and law enforcement – bridging the resource, knowledge, and priority gaps exhibited by many governments and law enforcement agencies around environmental crime.

It is this expertise and flexibility that allows Earth League International to operate in situations and locations where other NGOs or governmental agencies are unable or unwilling to operate. ELI’s approach is designed to identify and tell a complete story of the criminal networks and supply chains facilitating wildlife poaching and trafficking.

Our use of information gathering activities, such as intelligence production and undercover operations, in the field of addressing environmental crime, is inherently innovative. Human Intelligence, if used with a strategic long-term vision, can also lead to the reduction of what is now called the “militarization of conservation”, the violence that surrounds environmental crimes, with its very high human toll. Intelligence is the knowledge – ideally the foreknowledge – that Earth League International and partners must have to safeguard wildlife and people, assets and resources, and respond to concrete threats to the environment.

Environmental Crime is currently the fourth largest criminal sector in the world and is widely connected to other criminal enterprises. Unfortunately, there is often a lack of emphasis in law enforcement on these crimes due to the perceived minimal impact on people. In reality, the presence of criminal activity has vast impacts on the exploited individuals involved, as well as the ecosystems in which environmental crime destroys. Earth League International is taking steps to gather information and develop intelligence on these criminal organizations, share our intelligence with law enforcement agencies worldwide, and increase awareness about trafficking in the general public. All to ultimately disrupt illegal trafficking supply chains that inhibit the progression of conservation efforts and return autonomy to those affected by criminal activities.