WIREDGOV

There has been progress in key areas in the six months since the UK government staged the largest-ever Illegal Wildlife Trade conference in October 2018 including the launch of education packs.

Schemes to combat poaching and protect species like marine turtles and grey parrots from being illegally traded, are among fourteen new projects set to benefit from a UK government fund to combat wildlife criminals around the globe.

Ministers yesterday marked Earth Day (22 April) by announcing that the schemes will each receive a share in £4.6 million from the Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund.

The projects set to benefit include:

• Fauna & Flora International’s project for reducing demand for marine turtle products in Nicaragua
• ZSL’s work to disrupt the illegal wildlife trade in grey parrots in Cameroon
• Cracking wildlife smuggling in Madagascar, a project run by the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust
• Strengthening anti-poaching techniques and countering wildlife trafficking in Uganda, a project run by WCS

New education resources for school children around the globe was also launched on Earth Day. The online packs aim to teach the next generation about the dangers of fuelling the illegal wildlife trade. The UK government has provided £40,000 to create these packs for children in multiple languages.

Environment Minister Thérèse Coffey yesterday said:

The illegal wildlife trade is an international tragedy. This serious organised criminal networks do more than just damage wildlife - corruption and illegal activities undermine sustainable development and the rule of law, bringing misery to local communities.

The Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund is backing projects that will tackle the criminals at source and in countries that are destinations for items made from illegally traded plants and animals.

Through the online education packs, we will make sure that younger generations understand the importance of not fuelling demand for products made from illegally traded wildlife. This will provide a strong legacy from last year’s Illegal Wildlife Trade conference for schoolchildren and teachers around the world.

This is real progress to crack down on environmental crime. Working together, we can end this insidious trade.

Six months since the Duke of Cambridge and world leaders gathered in London for the biggest IWT conference in history, progress has been made at a pace around the world to tackle and end this crime.

In recent weeks, the UK has brought together some of the world’s leading specialists to form a consortium which will look at ways of reducing demand and driving behavioural change, to share knowledge and experience and inform further work to dampen demand for illegally traded wildlife and wildlife products.

Defra and the British Embassy in Hanoi, with support from the consortium members, recently held a successful workshop in Vietnam to look at ways to tackle the demand for illegally traded species and products (25 to 26 March 2019).

The workshop brought together local specialists from Vietnam and the wider region, along with Defra’s Demand Reduction consortium members and global academics and practitioners, to consider and share experiences on existing approaches to reducing demand for illegal wildlife trade products.

The outputs of the workshop will help inform the approach and scope of new initiatives and innovative projects to reduce demand for illegally traded wildlife and wildlife products. The discussions and outputs of the workshop will also inform other global work.

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