UN report praises UK efforts on wildlife and forest crime

UN report praises UK efforts on wildlife and forest crime - Defra

The Government has this week published a report by the United Nations which praises the UK’s approach to wildlife and forest crime.

The United Nations this week published a report praising the UK’s approach to wildlife and forest crime. The report also provides key recommendations about how the UK can improve or build on policy-making in this area.

head and shoulders of brown hare in sitting in long grass — Brown hare (pixabay)

The comprehensive analysis, the Wildlife and Forest Crime Analytic Toolkit Report: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, puts forward a series of recommendations as to how the UK can better address key aspects of wildlife crime which the government will consider carefully.

As President of the G7, the UK led other countries in recognising wildlife trafficking as a serious crime and secured commitments from members to use the International Consortium on Combatting Wildlife Crime’s (ICCWC) Wildlife and Forest Crime Analytic Toolkit to assess their response to wildlife crime. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) recommended the UK exports its world-leading expertise to support international efforts to tackle wildlife crime such as from Border Force and the National Wildlife Crime Unit.

The report highlighted the UK’s strength in “overarching policing structures and strategies to address wildlife crime” and that these structures could be described as “ international best practice”. It also recognises the UK as being the first G7 country to request the ICCWC Toolkit assessment as “a commendable demonstration of leadership shown by the UK in the wildlife crime arena”.

The report also recommends that the UK undertakes a review of regulations governing the implementation of CITES, particularly the Control of Trade in Endangered Species (COTES) Regulations 2018, and evaluates the scale and value of the legal and illegal wildlife trade in the UK to help support the detection of, and collection of data on, the illegal wildlife trade.

Today’s assessment forms part of our ongoing work to tackle wildlife crime, using the framework of the International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime (ICCWC) toolkit which was originally developed in 2012.