The International Consortium of Combating Wildlife Crime (ICCWC) has marked its fifth anniversary of providing much-needed tools and coordinated support for countries around the world to respond to the growing and changing threats to wildlife and livelihoods.

The ICCWC was founded in November 2010 in response to the upsurge in poaching of and trafficking in wildlife, as well as the involvement of organised crime groups and occasionally rebel militia in wildlife and forest crime.

Among the global alliance’s activities are providing teams of experts following wildlife incidents - for example in order to take DNA samples of illegal ivory when seized, as has been the case in Sri Lanka – as well as providing training on specialised investigation techniques, as has been provided in Bangladesh.

“The ICCWC is giving front line officers combating wildlife crime the ability to deploy the same tools and techniques used to combat other serious crimes, which is essential if we are to win this fight,” noted John E. Scanlon, Secretary-General of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

The CITES Secretariat makes up one of the five intergovernmental organisations joining forces together with Interpol, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the World Bank and the World Customs Organisation. Its donors include the European Commission, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and the World Bank.

For more information please contact yuan.liu@unep.org