Cicada exposes wildlife crimes

Cicada Films has gone undercover to reveal the world's worst wildlife crimes in a major six-part series for Animal Planet.

The series, called Crime Scene Wild, features sharks, big cats, bush meat, elephants, bears and Tibetan antelope in one-hour episodes. Undercover reporters take on the role of traders to infiltrate the groups responsible for the crimes.

Each programme features a different conservation group working with the production team to find the top of the crime chain. The series includes evidence of shark fins being put in soups and tiger penises used as aphrodisiacs.

Cicada head of production Christian Holland said: 'The series shows elephants being hacked to pieces - it's far from nice and fluffy. We are trying to get to the Mr Big behind these crimes and it's not just about a few poachers here and there - this is big business.'

Holland said the series had uncovered poaching operations which had resulted in several arrests. Because of the nature of some of the crimes, he said there was a forensic element to the programmes, with DNA evidence used to trace crimes back to those responsible.

The series has been commissioned by Animal Planet's Mark Wild and is executive produced by Cicada's Frances Berrigan. It will air later next year.

Animal Planet is part of the Discovery family of channels.

Have your say

You must sign in to make a comment.