News

For use of the media only; not an official document. Bangkok, 5 March 2013 – Wildlife crime has recently been brought to the fore at the highest political level, including through the outcomes of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development and resolutions by the United Nations General Assembly and the United Nations Economic and Social Council. Building on this international recognition, Ministers and high-level government representatives convened yesterday in Bangkok to discuss the challenges posed by the increasingly-sophisticated illicit trade

For use of the media only; not an official document. Geneva, 11 November 2012 – CITES, the convention on international wildlife trade, welcomes the call to combat the illegal trade in wildlife made by US State Secretary Hillary Clinton at an event on ‘Wildlife Trafficking and Conservation: A Call to Action’ held in Washington, D.C. on 8 November, 2012. “...we now find ourselves with all of that positive effort that started 30, 40 years ago being affected by changes that

For use of the media only; not an official document. Elephant poaching doubled & illegal ivory trade tripled in recent years Enhanced law Enforcement, international collaboration and reducing demand required to avert crisis Bangkok, 6 March 2013— Populations of elephants in Africa continue to be under severe threat as the illegal trade in ivory grows - with double the numbers of elephants killed and triple the amounts of ivory seized, over the last decade. According to a new report entitled

For use of the media only; not an official document. The Consortium also secures USD 600k to strengthen national enforcement capacities Geneva, 25 July 2012 – The International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime (ICCWC) today launched its Wildlife and Forest Crime Analytic Toolkit on the occasion of the 62nd meeting of the CITES Standing Committee being held in Geneva from 23 to 27 July 2012. ICCWC also announced that it has secured USD 600,000 for the current fiscal year to

For use of the media only; not an official document. Bangkok, 5 March 2013 – The executive heads of a consortium established to combat wildlife crime met alongside the triennial Conference of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Senior officials from the CITES Secretariat, INTERPOL, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the World Bank and the World Customs Organization (WCO) convened in Bangkok to discuss the future strategy of

For use of the media only; not an official document. Geneva, 2 July 2013 – The Secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) welcomes the Executive Order on Combating Wildlife Trafficking issued by the President of the United States, Barack Obama, on 1 July 2013. The Executive Order addresses both its domestic and international response to the current surge in wildlife trafficking. The Executive Order establishes a Presidential Task Force on

In response to the need to take new approaches to combat the illegal trade more effectively, the International Consortium on Combatting Wildlife Crime (ICCWC), at the request of Sri Lanka, deployed its first Wildlife Incident Support Teams (WIST). The WIST was aimed at collecting DNA samples from 359 elephant tusks that were seized by Sri Lanka Customs authorities in the port of Colombo and was in response to a Decision adopted by the Conference of the Parties to CITES at

The International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime (ICCWC) convened the world's Wildlife Enforcement Networks for the first time in the margins of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in March 2013 in Bangkok, Thailand. The First Global Meeting of the Wildlife Enforcement Networks (WENs), which brought together 131 participants from around the world, enabled wildlife law enforcement officers and WEN representatives to share their experiences at

For use of the media only; not an official document. Vienna , 23 April 2013 – At the current Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ), the heads of two United Nations bodies called on countries to recognize wildlife and forest crimes as a serious form of organized crime and strengthen penalties against criminal syndicates and networks profiting from such illegal trade. Following a side-event at the CCPCJ on this issue, Yury Fedotov, Executive Director of the United Nations

Cutting-edge training in investigation techniques has been delivered to wildlife law enforcement officials across Asia, helping them in their battle to halt transnational organized wildlife and forest crime. Over the past few years, there have been a number of successful seizures and arrests of wildlife traffickers at airports, seaports and border crossings in Asia, Africa and other regions of the world. These typically result from risk analysis or actionable intelligence of an individual traveling with illegal wildlife such as ivory