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Int'l agency highlights growing cooperation to combat wildlife crime

Xinhua, June 18, 2015 Adjust font size:

The International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime (ICCWC) on Thursday welcomed the results of an international law enforcement operation conducted in May 2015 with the aim of combating wildlife crime.

According to the ICCWC, Operation COBRA III resulted in 139 arrests and more than 247 seizures, which included elephant ivory, medicinal plants, rhino horns, pangolins, rosewood, tortoises and many other plant and animal specimens.

Key successes during the operation included the arrest of a person believed to have been coordinating rhino horn smuggling from Namibia, the arrest of a notorious elephant poacher in India and the seizure of 340 elephant tusks and 65 rhino horns in Mozambique.

ICCWC said over 50,000 illegal wildlife items were seized in Britain, as well as an additional 10,000 in Austria and 5,000 in Germany, which included large volumes of illegal supplement capsules containing wildlife products.

Other countries where large numbers of illegal items were seized include China, Singapore and South Africa. In total, 37 countries reported seizures or arrests during the operation.

"It is most encouraging to see enforcement agencies working together across source, transit and destination states to combat these serious wildlife crimes, which makes it increasingly likely that these illicit activities will be detected and the criminals behind them brought to justice," said John E. Scanlon, the secretary general of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

Yury Fedotov, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), highlighted, "While I congratulate the participating countries on these seizures, I also hope that equal emphasis is placed on the prosecutions and intelligence-led investigations and it is key to keep in mind that it takes a network to defeat a network."

According to ICCWC, further arrests and prosecutions could be expected, as follow up investigations resulting from the operation continue. Endit