While CITES has thus far refused to reign in the legal international trade in a number of endangered species, the 15th triennial meeting has made clamping down on the illegal trade a priority. To this end, they are set to usher in of a new era of wildlife law enforcement with the recently-formed International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime (ICCWC).

Made up of the CITES Secretariat, INTERPOL, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the World Bank and the World Customs Organization, the Consortium is already engaging in a number of joint activities to bring wildlife criminals to justice.

Measures already proposed include:

• A manual to help gather more intelligence when smugglers are arrested.

• Threat assessment tools intended to help countries design their response to wildlife crime.

• Specialized advice on dealing with money-laundering and asset recovery.

• Guidance on the international exchange of information between enforcement agencies.

• Efforts to raise funds for national capacity-building.

Improved law enforcement will be used in conjunction with the CITES Secretariat alert system already in place that provides risk-assessment, targeting and profiling intelligence to countries around the world.

Since the last Conference of the Parties, alerts have been issued on such subjects as illegal trade in caviar, falcons and great apes, and smuggling techniques involving postal and courier services. The CITES Alerts are widely used to help Customs and other border control agencies intercept shipments of illegally-harvested wildlife being moved from one continent to another.

If the new Consortium is able to act more swiftly and effectively on these alerts than is currently possible for individual nations and organisations, it should provide a boost to wildlife law enforcement a time when increasingly sophisticated and violent smuggling and poaching is placing huge pressure on many endangered species.

Willem Wijnstekers, Secretary-General of CITES, believes that this new agreement is a strong move to shift the balance of power away from the illegal trade:

“We are determined that there will be a level playing field and that a new era of wildlife law enforcement is introduced. An era where those who rob countries and communities of their natural resources will face a determined and formidable opposition. It is high time that more wildlife criminals end up behind bars, where they belong,”

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