“The Wildlife Justice Commission has built perhaps the best intelligence and investigative capacity in relation to illegal wildlife trade in the world. It has been instrumental in the arrests of more than 40 wildlife criminals, most of them level 3 criminals or above; it is working with a wide range of law enforcement agencies and has helped improve the seriousness with which wildlife crime is taken in key trading and market countries such as Malaysia and Viet Nam.”

“The people in Africa live off the land, they live off the wildlife, they live off the fisheries and they live off forest. Take that away from them and you’ve created poverty overnight. Our future depends on eradicating wildlife crime, with organisations like the Wildlife Justice Commission, working together with governments, other NGOs and on the ground initiatives both locally and globally to make this possible.”

“Despite the best efforts of the international conservation community, losses of elephant, rhino and other threatened African species such as pangolin continue to mount whilst the risks for the criminal bosses remain negligible to non-existent. The long-term solution to illegal wildlife trafficking almost certainly lies in the economic empowerment of rural communities, the transfer of risk from Africa through the entire black market value chain to the demand states and the mobilisation of political will. The systems meant to secure the persistence of Africa’s wildlife are largely failing and this is where the work of the Wildlife Justice Commission is so important. Building a body of evidence that cannot be ignored, suppressed or whitewashed represents a compelling mechanism to achieve accountability at a political level and to start transferring risk to demand states. At African Parks we are watching with great anticipation to see the work of the Wildlife Justice Commission be transformative in the fight against wildlife crime.”