The Wildlife Justice Commission works with the mission to disrupt and help dismantle the criminal networks that profit from the trafficking of wildlife, timber and fish, a major crime that brings species to extinction and puts global security and public health at risk.
We support international law enforcement cooperation by developing intelligence on transnational criminality and sharing it with national law enforcement agencies, helping to build the intelligence picture beyond their borders.
Our Intelligence Development Unit is the largest intelligence analysis team of an NGO focusing solely on wildlife crime and is the cornerstone of our work. We are currently supporting several law enforcement agencies with undercover and analytical support.
Making the fight against global wildlife crime a priority –at every level– is crucial to save species from extinction and to curb threats to global public health and security. We inform governments about wildlife crime dynamics for them to take action with the speed that the scale of these crimes demand and hold them accountable if they fail to do so.
In many countries, inadequate technical and human resources and capacity are major factors preventing effective law enforcement action on wildlife crime. To help bridge this gap, we support the capacity development of police units in several Asian and African countries.
The escalating trafficking of pangolin scales
Analysis of seizure data of smuggled pangolin scales during 2016-2019 shows a significant and rapid increase in the volume being trafficked. The findings and conclusions from our Intelligence Development Unit clearly point to organised crime networks operating on an industrial scale, which is rapidly expanding year on year, putting an entire species at risk.
“The worst wildlife crimes are transnational in their context and those committing them act with impunity worldwide. Effective prevention and responses, therefore, should have a crucial transnational strategy and component. The Wildlife Justice Commission fulfils a fundamental function, contributing to the prevention of, and justice for, wildlife crimes.”
The Wildlife Justice Commission in The Hague, which maintains a remarkable intelligence network tracking the trade, has warned that criminals are stockpiling material and that lockdown is allowing poachers in sub-Saharan Africa a free rein. There is an overwhelming moral and environmental case for a multilateral effort to stifle this business. It is also worth remembering that Ebola, HIV, Sars, H1N1, Mers and Sars-CoV-2 are all reportedly zoonotic diseases, which jumped species because of intense proximity between humans and the original carriers. We must now recognise a hitherto relatively unimportant branch of organised criminal activity has the capacity to bring the entire world to a standstill.
Article published in The Guardian, 7 June 2020
“An efficient financial investigation requires, amongst other things, closer cooperation and collaborations among not only Law Enforcement Agencies but also with Financial Intelligence Units, financial institutions, and financial regulators. When criminal networks are getting more multi-commodity and less discriminating in their trade, Law Enforcement Agencies need to extend their intelligence sharing to non-Law Enforcement players, such as the Wildlife Justice Commission. One may consider illegal wildlife trade a soft underbelly of organised crime, but the network and associated cells perpetrating illegal wildlife trade are hard criminals. The intelligence collected and collated by the Wildlife Justice Commission therefore can be very useful to Law Enforcement Agencies in their investigations into other organised crimes and vice versa.”
“The activities of the Wildlife Justice Commission were a true revelation to me: innovative, focussed, daring, well-documented, alerting and mobilizing at the right time the official authorities. This approach has proved very successful. Supporting the Wildlife Justice Commission’s activities is a must for whoever is interested in fighting wildlife crime and protecting the planet for future generations.”
“I was honored that the Wildlife Justice Commission selected me to present the results of its investigation during the 2016 Public Hearing in The Hague. The Wildlife Justice Commission’s investigators had assembled a mountain of evidence, and preparing for the hearing at first seemed like an overwhelming task. But as I dove in, I soon was struck by the amazing work that the Wildlife Justice Commission had done during the investigation, and was delighted to learn that the Wildlife Justice Commission’s investigators had assembled an overwhelming case, with a meticulous and professional attention to detail. The Wildlife Justice Commission’s collection of evidence was as thorough and as well-presented as any I received while serving as a federal prosecutor at the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.”
