Photo credit: Arturo Muñoz
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Lake Titicaca - one of the world's highest lakes at nearly 4,000m - sits in the Andes mountains at the border of Bolivia and Peru.
Archaeological remains attest to human civilisation at Titicaca going back two thousand years or more; ancient cultures and practices still survive today despite modern pressure including growing tourism and environmental change.
A large frog, Telmatobius culeatus, which may reach 60cm, inhabits the shallower waters of the lake. Worshipped by some indigenous communities living around the Titcaca basin, its continued existence is now under threat as environmental changes threaten its habitat, while a growing demand for it as traditional medicine, food and drink drive an alarming illegal trade.
With local people and indigenous communities standing to lose a culturally treasured icon as well as a key local resource, it is symbolic of how illegal wildlife trade threatens both nature and people.
Illegal wildlife trade remains a significant but poorly understood threat in Bolivia, affecting biodiversity, public health, and local livelihoods.
This project - Titicaca Water Frog: Creating evidence and empowering Bolivian communities to address illegal wildlife trade - is led by TRAFFIC in partnership with the Bolivian Amphibian Initiative (BAI) and supported by the UK Government’s IWT Challenge Fund. It aims to generate robust evidence on wildlife trade dynamics in Bolivia, with a particular focus on the Endangered Titicaca Water Frog.
Through a combination of market research, social science, and community engagement, the project will build a strong evidence base to inform future behaviour change interventions and sustainable livelihood solutions, working closely with local communities and national stakeholders.
Problems and solutions
Better data for better law-enforcement
Data on illegal wildlife trade in Bolivia is limited, fragmented, and often anecdotal, making it difficult for authorities and conservation actors to respond effectively.
This project is conducting systematic market monitoring (physical and online), analysing seizure data, and documenting trade dynamics across key locations in Bolivia.
This will improve evidence-based understanding of IWT patterns to support better enforcement, policy, and conservation responses.
Food and traditional medicine
The Titicaca water frog continues to be used for food and traditional medicine, but the motivations, social drivers, and extent of consumption are not well understood.
The project will use social research methods—including surveys, focus group discussions, and social listening—to identify key drivers of demand and audience segments.
Insights will inform design of future behaviour change interventions to reduce demand for the species.
Economic livelihoods
The relationship between the Titicaca water frog and local communities is poorly understood and largely undocumented. While subsistence use is legal in Bolivia, commercial trade—particularly to urban markets and across borders—is not, creating a blurred boundary between legal use, cultural practices, and illicit trade. At the same time, communities around Lake Titicaca face growing economic pressures due to declining fisheries linked to pollution and climate change, increasing their vulnerability to illegal wildlife trade and potential exploitation by criminal networks.
The project will work directly with communities to better understand the role of the frog in local livelihoods and culture, and to co-design viable, culturally appropriate livelihood alternatives. Using participatory, gender-sensitive approaches grounded in Free, Prior and Informed Consent, communities will help shape solutions from the outset.
Community-led solutions will support poverty reduction, strengthen resilience, and improve natural resource governance, while reducing pressures on the species and safeguarding local rights and livelihoods.
Scalable responses
Addressing illegal wildlife trade requires coordinated action across government, civil society, and local communities, but collaboration is often constrained by lack of shared evidence.
The project will share findings with national authorities, local partners, and communities, fostering collaboration and informing future programming. Strengthened partnerships and a shared evidence base will enable more effective, scalable responses to illegal wildlife trade in Bolivia.
“The Titicaca Water Frog is more than a species - it remains sacred to some indigenous lake communities, woven into ancestral cosmovisions of Titicaca itself. Supporting its conservation alongside local livelihoods is both a responsibility and a privilege."
Alan Hesse, Project lead
Funded by the UK Government through the Illegal Wildlife Challenge Fund
