Cooperation – Enhancing information sharing across jurisdictions

Multi-jurisdictional cooperation is a key element of wildlife protection and illegal wildlife trafficking. Strategies to reduce the pressurse of illegal and unsustainable trade on biodiversity - and enhance the benefits to wildlife conservation and human well-being that derive from trade at sustainable levels - require cooperation between conservations, law enforcement, customs, and private industry.

  • Cross-jurisdictional comparisons of wildlife trade trends, patterns, impacts and drivers to bolster the knowledge base on trade in wild animals and plants.
  • Policy-level work to inform, support and encourage action by governments and international bodies to adopt, implement and enforce effective policies

Effective information sharing through formal and informal networks can result in high-level conviction and seizure of assets.

 

Once a baseline level of cooperation is established, individual nations should implement legislation to enable wildlife crime to be treated as serious and organised crime according to the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC), with penalties of four years or more in prison. Sentences should punish the offender to an extent that is justified by the circumstances, and be comparable with sentences applied to other serious crimes. Sentences should provide conditions that will help the offender to be rehabilitated, deter the offender and other persons from committing the same or a similar offence, and make clear that the community denounces the sort of conduct in which the offender was involved.

 

Information exchange between law enforcement agencies, FIUs, financial institutions, and civil society should be encouraged, to share knowledge, identify targets and patterns of behaviour, and more effectively mitigate wildlife crime risks.