CITES Partner Spotlight: INTERPOL’s Project WEB combats online wildlife crime

“As the CITIES conference comes to the end of its first week, I thought I would just add the video in along with this post. Born Free’s CEO Will Travis, talks about some of the issues raised. Although I can’t believe the bid to halt the polar bear trade, was just swept under the table…WTF… Russia, Canada & the US…really have left the polar bears out in the cold…literally! I’m disgusted with their decision; same goes for the poor manatee!! I can’t wait to see what rubbish they come up with next week, for protecting species round the world; who are just about hanging on with their teeth!! Do the delegates from their respective country, actually know the danger some species are in?? I have my doubts given the first weeks bungles, honestly some of them are about as much use as a chocolate fire guard. Take about 30 of us animal advocates from face book, stick us round a table; & I’m sure we could come up with plans to help those in need!!”

Today saw the launch of the first ever internationally coordinated enforcement investigation into the online ivory trade.

Following the International Fund for Animal Welfare’s (IFAW’s) recommendation and with our support INTERPOL undertook Project WEB, an investigation into the online ivory trade within the EU.

Summing up week one at the CITES meeting in Bangkok

Published on 8 Mar 2013

Will Travers, CEO of Born Free, sums up week one at CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) meeting, covering secret ballots, elephants, rhino, polar bears, manatees and turtles.

The report revealed that there were hundreds of ivory items conservatively valued at approximately EUR 1,450,000 for sale during a two-week period on Internet auction sites in nine European countries.

During this survey of sites by enforcers, more than 660 advertisements for ivory on 61 different auction sites were analysed and as a result of the surveillance, six national and three international investigations were launched in cases where ivory was described as new or where ivory was being traded from abroad.

Project WEB by the numbers:

Estimated €1.45 million worth of ivory

Found in 9 Countries

Across 61 auction websites

In 660 online advertisements

Containing 100s of items made from ivory

Over a 2 week period

Leading to 6 national investigations

And 3 international investigations

This week sees the 16^th meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). 

The 177 countries that are Party to CITES have already agreed, thanks in part to IFAW’s lobbying efforts, to investigate and prosecute wildlife criminals trading online as well as evaluate or develop their domestic measures to ensure they are sufficient to fight online wildlife crime.

While at least one country has strengthened their legislation to specifically target online wildlife crime and a small number of countries have started to develop strategies for tackling illegal wildlife sales on the internet, many more countries need to deliver on their promise and stamp out online wildlife crime.

Since 2004 IFAW has been highlighting the growing global threat posed by online wildlife crime to endangered wildlife.  A series of IFAW investigations have repeatedly shown that there are thousands of wild animals and wildlife ‘products’, such as ivory, available for sale on the internet all over the world.

Stop The Ivory trade

IFAW has found live primates, big cats, birds and reptiles advertised online while animal parts from rhino’s, elephants, sharks, Tibetan antelopes and sturgeon have also been available to purchase on the internet.

In January 2012, IFAW’s online monitoring found 17,847 ivory products listed on 13 Chinese websites, even though none of these products had the necessary Government approval.

Meanwhile, a four-week investigation in the United Arab Emirates and some neighbouring Arab countries in the same year found 796 adverts featuring live wildlife over 11 websites. None of the adverts had any documentary proof to demonstrate that the sales complied with the law.

In Europe an IFAW investigation in 2011 found a thriving trade in ivory items. The investigation tracked 43 sites in the UK, France, Portugal, Spain and Germany for a two-week period and found 669 advertisements for ivory.

The statistics are disturbing but can be hard to comprehend so let me give you one example that shows the horrors of this illegal trade.

In 2010 a British couple admitted 12 counts of illegally exporting, three of illegally importing, seven of illegally selling and two of illegally possessing specimens under the Customs and Excise Management Act.

The couple in question had been selling animal body parts from owls, a baboon, macaque monkeys, a python, an African penguin, an African lion cub and a Malaysian flying fox.

These items were kept in a store room full of skulls and other animal body parts which, when I saw the pictures, made me think it as a room of death for wildlife.

Highlighting the problem of this trade is an important first step but IFAW has been going one stage further and engaging website companies, law enforcers and Governments in our campaign to stamp out online wildlife crime.

After our 2008 Killing with Keystrokes investigation, where we found ivory was the number one wildlife product being traded online, we encouraged eBay to ban the sale of ivory on their websites and IFAW was very pleased to see them announce this ban in January 2009.

Meanwhile other websites have since followed suit including Alibaba (www.taobao.com) in China, the world’s largest business-to-business and outsource portal site for traders.

However, while banning the sale of wildlife products on websites does restrict unscrupulous traders’ ability to easily profit from these products, there is clearly a need for enforcers to ramp up their efforts.

We have seen traders time and again attempting to disguise their wildlife products to avoid detection by police, customs or website companies such as eBay.

In addition to working with INTERPOL IFAW is working with enforcement agencies across the world to catch online wildlife criminals by sharing the findings of our online investigations, facilitating international enforcement operations and by bringing together website companies and enforcement agencies in order that they can work in partnership in their fight against illegal wildlife sales on the internet.

–TM

Please sign petition:- Take action to help end the trafficking of wildlife online now, click here. 

News Link:-http://www.ifaw.org/united-kingdom/news/cites-partner-spotlight-interpol%E2%80%99s-project-web-combats-online-wildlife-crime

Help Stop The Killing And Poaching Of Wild Tigers In India

“Please help stop the senseless killing of these beautiful & powerful species, before they are gone forever.” 

“Posted for & on behalf of my dear friend & animal warrior Tony Zadel”

STOP KILLING AND POACHING TIGERS IN INDIA FOR THEIR SKIN !

PLEASE SIGN & SHARE WIDELY THESE  PETITIONS – Petitions below

POPULATION OF THE TIGERS IN INDIA DECLINES ENORMOUSLY FAST !
1900 – 100,000 exist
1950 – 40,000
2007 – less than 5,000 survive; 2,500 in India, IUCN status ‘Endangered’
2010 (Year of the Tiger) – only 3,500 remain in the wild globally (1,400 in India)

Tigers are a conservation dependent species, requiring large contiguous forests with access to water and undisturbed core areas in which to breed. Tiger range throughout India, Indochina, and Southeast Asia is now 40 percent smaller than it was in 1951, and today tigers occupy a mere 7 percent of their historical territory in increasingly fragmented and degraded landscapes.

Amidst this, the threats are mounting. The main threats to wild tigers include:

• Habitat loss and fragmentation due to mining
• Logging, farming
• human settlement
• Depletion of their prey base
• Conflict with humans – villagers wander the forest for grass to feed their animals
• Poaching for their skins, and other parts for Traditional Asian Medicines, such as bone.

Source:http://www.bornfree.org.uk/animal-future/project-focus/tigers/

–Latest figures show there may only be 400 Sumatran tigers left in the world. Unless we take action now we could lose these magnificent animals forever.

Tiger skins are still in demand as luxury items in some countries, and tiger parts coveted for their ‘medicinal’ properties.
The tigers’ forest habitat is vanishing too. Destruction of forests for timber, agriculture and road building has forced tigers into ever-smaller areas, where they’re even more vulnerable to poachers.
Poachers also hunt the tiger’s prey species, and tigers are forced to target domestic animals, bringing them into fatal conflict with local people.

Watch this insightful video to see what the problems are: Please note, some scenes contain graphic images. 

101 East: India Last Of The Tigers

Uploaded on 18 Nov 2011

Conservationists are in a desperate and uphill battle to save India’s tigers from extinction. Video Link: ! http://youtu.be/VlcGI_J7Jho

LATEST UPDATE :Tiger smuggling ring busted in Nepal ….

Nepalese police have arrested 7 people involved with tiger smuggling in the country and recovered 7 tiger skins, hundreds of tiger parts and bones. Two operations were undertaken by the Nepalese authorities following specialist intelligence training by Interpol in December. 
The first operation was on 11 January.

Officers of Manaslu Conservation Area seized four tiger skins, 53 kg of tiger bones and arrested four people who were allegedly trying to smuggle the tiger parts into Tibet, China. The following day, police conducting road checks near the Chinese border seized 5 tiger skins and 114 kg of tiger bones that were concealed in bags of rice in a van also heading to China.

Here the picture:http://sphotos-d.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/408499_466351453422681_777225923_n.jpg

Investigation’s into the ring which is involved with smuggling tiger parts into China is ongoing.
Source http://wildlifenews.co.uk/2013/tiger-smuggling-ring-busted-in-nepal/

Please sign the following petitions:

• http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/campaigns/forests/Indonesia/Get-involved/Letter-to-APP-/
•  http://www.thepetitionsite.com/727/269/524/save-the-wetlands-of-north-bengal/
•  https://www.change.org/petitions/stop-killing-of-tigers-and-leopards-in-india
•  http://www.thepetitionsite.com/982/645/045/stop-tiger-poaching-in-india/
•  http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/tigeraid_petition1/
•  http://www.petitionbuzz.com/petitions/savethesumatrantiger
•  http://www.change.org/petitions/minister-of-forestry-zulkifli-hasan-stop-tiger-factories-please-no-legal-tiger-breeding-for-pets
•  http://www.petitiononline.com/saveking/petition.html

READ MORE ABOUT TIGERS FACTS HERE : http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/tigers/

“Thank you all Tony Zadel – Copyright(©)”

Interpol: 200 arrested in biggest crackdown on elephant slaughter

More than 200 people were arrested and two tons of ivory seized — along with guns, lion pelts, rhino horns and live birds — in the largest operation against wildlife smugglers to date, Interpol announced Tuesday. As sizable as the numbers are, though, the real test will be whether Africa finally sees a drop in the record slaughter of elephants and rhinos.

The three-month operation ranged across 17 African countries as well as China, where officials cracked down on websites and stores selling ornaments made from ivory, the trade for which is banned globally.

“The intelligence gathered during Operation Worthy will enable us to identify the links between the poachers and the global networks driving and facilitating the crime,” David Higgins, head of Interpol’s environmental crime program, said in a statement.

The International Fund for Animal Welfare helped Interpol by training officers in African countries, and said it also provided leads that allowed China to uncover 700 cases of illegal wildlife trade.

China “busted 13 gangs, punished 1,031 illegal traders, seized over 130,000 wild animals and their animal products,” IFAW said in a statement, adding that 7,155 shops and 628 websites selling banned animals were shut down.

Still, the two tons of ivory seized is just a fraction of what’s smuggled each year.

Last year, a record 23 tons of ivory were confiscated — which means many more got smuggled out of Africa. Those 23 tons probably represent some 2,500 elephants, the international monitoring groupTRAFFIC said in a statement.

Read more:-http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/19/12303417-interpol-200-arrested-in-biggest-crackdown-on-elephant-slaughter?lite

 

INTERPOL Completes Largest Ever International Anti-Ivory Operation While Chinese Authority Conduct Massive Crackdown on Wildlife Trafficking

TORONTO, ONTARIO, Jun 19, 2012 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) — INTERPOL have arrested more than 200 people, seized almost 2 tonnes of contraband ivory, 20kg of rhino horn and military grade automatic weapons in an operation that spanned three months and 14 African countries.

Operation WORTHY saw INTERPOL and IFAW ( http://www.ifaw.org – the International Fund for Animal Welfare) team up to target criminal organizations behind the illegal trafficking of ivory. Also seized were lion, leopard and cheetah pelts, crocodile and python skins, live tropical birds, turtles, and other protected species destined to be illegally trafficked around the world.

More than 320 officers from a range of agencies including police, customs, environmental protection agencies, veterinary services, airport security, ministries of tourism and national prosecuting authorities took part in Operation Worthy which saw interventions carried out at markets, ports, shops, border crossings and during roadside checks.

Canada is one of the leading countries which supports INTERPOL’s Environmental Crime Program through a grant from Environment Canada, and Environment Canada was also part of the partnership with IFAW and INTERPOL. Prior to this raid, in August 2011, Environment Canada designed and delivered wildlife law enforcement training to twenty-seven law enforcement officers from eleven southern African countries.

“IFAW believes that one elephant killed for its ivory is one too many. We will not stand by while elephants are needlessly slaughtered,” said Kelvin Alie, Director of IFAW’s Wildlife Crime and Consumer Awareness Programme. “Some range states are doing their part in hosting and protecting their elephants – the rest of us must act to support them in these efforts. That means developed countries joining IFAW in training wildlife officers, researching the illegal trade and ensuring the safety of our common natural heritage.”

“This has been to date the most wide-ranging operation coordinated by INTERPOL against the illegal ivory trade, not just in terms of seizures and arrests, but also in targeting the criminal organizations making millions of dollars through the killing and destruction of wildlife and their habitat, and associated crimes such as murder, corruption and money laundering,” said David Higgins, manager of INTERPOL’s Environmental Crime Programme.

“The intelligence gathered during Operation Worthy will enable us to identify the links between the poachers and the global networks driving and facilitating the crime. By identifying their international trafficking routes, arresting those involved at higher levels, and suppressing the crime at its source, in transit, and at its destination we are making a real contribution to the conservation of the world’s environment and biodiversity,” concluded Mr Higgins.

Countries which participated in Operation Worthy: Ethiopia, Botswana, Ghana, Guinea Conakry, Kenya, Liberia, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

Read the rest of this news:-http://www.marketwatch.com/story/interpol-completes-largest-ever-international-anti-ivory-operation-while-chinese-authority-conduct-massive-crackdown-on-wildlife-trafficking-2012-06-19

Africa Elephant Ivory Poaching: Interpol Mounts Largest Ever Crackdown | World News | Sky News

Interpol is carrying out the largest anti-elephant ivory poaching operation ever mounted following mass killings in Africa.

Wildlife agents in 14 different African countries have been raiding outlets and hunting down traders to crack down on the multi-million pound industry.

Operation Worthy, as it is being called, is aimed at stifling the increasing demand in illegal elephant ivory, mostly from Asian countries such as China.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

The operation, which has been co-ordinated by Interpol’s Environmental Crime Programme and funded by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), has already had some success.

Several dozen people have been arrested and the agents have recovered what they describe as “significant” amounts of illegal wildlife products – including more than 250kg of raw ivory but also lion and leopard pelts, python and crocodile skins and live birds.

The operation follows a terrible year for elephants in 2011.

It was the worst year on record for ivory seizures – and only last week a team of wildlife workers for IFAW reported an unprecedented slaughter of elephants in Cameroon.

“This is about bringing hard-nosed criminals to justice and stopping the cruelty that has been inflicted on thousands of elephants and rhinos,” said Kelvin Alie, the director of IFAW’s Wildlife Crime and Consumer Awareness Programme.

One of the main exit points for elephant ivory is Kenya and the Sky team was taken to see a huge stockpile of confiscated ivory near the capital, Nairobi.

We have been asked not to identify where we were taken for fear it will be raided and the ivory stolen. Elephant ivory is big business and protecting the elephants can be a dangerous occupation.

As we arrived, the rangers from the Kenyan Wildlife Service told us a female ranger had died that day trying to protect the elephants in her charge.

We were taken through heavily bolted doors to see dozens and dozens of tusks. They filled three rooms. The guard drew my attention to a stack of 12 crates – all filled with ivory hidden among avocados before being spotted by customs officers.

This was just one consignment – with each tusk with a street value of about £40,000 on the black market. They haven’t yet decided what to do with the illegal ivory – and what to do with it is a big problem.

In 2008, the ban on ivory sales was lifted to allow for the trade of 108 tons of ivory stocks from Botswana, South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe to China and Japan.

The sell-off did dispense with old stocks but it also boosted demand – and worringly provided an ideal cover for illicit ivory sales.

China’s rapid economic expansion into Africa has also inadvertently led to an upsurge in demand for ivory products. With Chinese buyers now prevalent in many African countries, the criminal syndicates ordering the tusks have a ready market.

The rangers from the Kenya Wildlife Service fear the poaching is already depleting elephant stocks to a dangerous level.

Patrick Omondi, the assistant senior director of Kenyan Wildlife Service told Sky News: “We are already seeing populations of elephants disappear. And Kenya cannot fight this war on its own.

“We need the whole international community to come together to fight this or I fear the elephant will eventually become extinct in parts of Africa.”

:: One tusk can weigh over 60kg and is equivalent to £10,000 of raw ivory on the street

:: 500 elephants were killed in Cameroon this year in one single park

:: In 2011 23 tons of ivory was seized – the equivalent of 2,500 elephants, only 10-20% of the total