For several decades, crime typology reports have been successfully applied in the financial industry to assist bank analysts and law enforcement agencies with recognizing incidences of money laundering and terror financing.

The success of these reports in the fight against financial crimes has led us to believe that they have the potential for a broader application, specifically in the realm of the online illegal wildlife trade where they could be specifically adapted to assist in the development of better means of detection and more effective interventions.

The Global Initiative (GI-TOC) and the Alliance to Counter Crime Online (ACCO) collaborated to analyze common characteristics among social media posts advertising exotic pets and illegal wildlife parts to determine if typologies could be developed to assist law enforcement, tech firms, the financial industry and other civil society organizations in detecting and tackling wildlife trade offenders in the online sphere and specifically on social media platforms.

This work led to the development of this community tool that explores the history of typological reports, examines how they may be used in the counter-wildlife-trafficking sphere and provides a sample typology report that explains the different sections and information required. It is intended to assist institutions and organizations researching and responding to the illegal wildlife trade by giving them a template to report their data in a clear and succinct manner that highlights the most important information for responders.