The Hindu : New Delhi News : Experts caution against rise in wildlife crime

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Sunday, Jul 27, 2008
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Experts caution against rise in wildlife crime

Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI: “Wildlife crime is growing to become one of the most serious crimes in India and must be tackled immediately. There is a need to create awareness not only among the top enforcement officials but also among those working in the field. Creating a data bank of information related to wildlife crime and making it available to agencies on the ground at all the time should prove to be one of the strongest tools for curbing illegal wildlife trade,” said former Governor of Manipur, Mizoram and Jharkhand, Ved Marwah here on Saturday.

Mr. Marwah was speaking at a conference of senior police and wildlife officers who had gathered in the Capital to share experiences and address issues related to wildlife crime in the country. Organised by Traffic India with support from World Wildlife Fund (WWF)-India, the conference was aimed at integrating the efforts of various enforcement agencies in India to combat wildlife crime.

Stating that organised crime needs an organised response, WWF-India Chief Executive Officer Ravi Singh added that while working on issues related to wildlife crime with the enforcement officials in the field, there was a need to institutionalise their experiences and take the battle to another level. “Bringing interested key individuals together for a freewheeling brainstorming session on issues related to wildlife crime is certainly the need of the hour,” he said.

Mr. Marwah also released Traffic India’s latest poster on ‘Turtles and Freshwater Tortoises of India’ at the conference. The poster is a pictorial guide that will help enforcement officials identify various species in trade. Traffic India plans to put these up at various national and international transit points including airports and seaports. This poster is the group’s latest intervention to create public awareness about the illegal wildlife trade in India.

Head-Traffic Samir Sinha said: “The uniqueness of this meeting was the diversity of participants who attended it. There were officials from various stakeholders such as the forensic department, the forest department, the CBI, the police and the anti-narcotics department who brought along with them rich experience and expertise that is much required to curb wildlife crime in India.”

The meeting was successful in generating ideas on cooperation and collaboration that will further help to curb wildlife crime. Developing a mechanism to share data related to wildlife crime at the institution level, identifying key forensic experts from across the country and using their expertise to collect scientific evidence in wildlife cases and coordinating efforts of various agencies were some of the key action points discussed at the meeting.

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