14:55
(Bangkok, Thailand) - Police, Customs and wildlife officers from Asia, Africa and the United States announced today that a cross border enforcement operation codenamed “COBRA” was successfully carried out. The month-long effort was described as “An international, intelligence-driven operation aimed at dismantling organized wildlife crime syndicates with significant results and the prospect for more.” The operation was a welcome and innovative initiative from countries, the first international effort of its kind to focus on the sharing of investigation information in real time among countries and a concerted response by law enforcement agencies of implicated countries and partnering institutions towards curtailing rampant wildlife crime. It facilitated increased cooperation among range, transit and consumer countries where significant seizures of contraband wildlife specimens and arrests of suspects involved were recorded. The use of specialized investigation techniques was promoted and a number of follow up investigations into the seizures were initiated.Between 6 January and 5 February 2013, representatives from the Office of China National Interagency CITES Enforcement Coordination Group (NICECG), Lusaka Agreement Task Force (LATF) , Nepalese Police (Representing SA-WEN), South African Police Service, India’s Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB), Indonesian Police, Vietnamese Environmental Police, Royal Thai Police, Association of Southeast Asia Nations Wildlife Enforcement Network (ASEAN-WEN), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the Regional Intelligence Liaison Office for Customs in the Asia/Pacific region (RILO A/P) worked jointly and coordinated the operation as an International Coordination Team (ICT) based in Bangkok. Real time sharing of information amongst the agencies and across borders characterized the ITC, regional and national coordinators.
The ICT, chaired by China, constantly maintained contact with operation teams at regional and national levels. The operation yielded hundreds of arrests which included seizures of assorted wildlife specimens; mainly 42,000kg of red sander wood, 6,500kg of elephant ivory, 1,550kg of shatoosh (around 10,000 Tibetean antelopes must have been killed to collect such an amount of this wool), 2,600 live snakes, 324 hornbills, 102 pangolins, 800kgs of pangolin scales, 22 rhino horns and 4 rhino horn carvings, 10 tiger and 7 leopard trophies, 31kg elephant meat as well as claws and teeth of protected felid animals and plant species. Assorted equipment including fire arms and ammunitions were also recovered from poachers during the operation.
“Operation COBRA focused on quality of investigations over quantity of seizures. The team gathered vital intelligence from this operation, which will be very useful in the ongoing joint investigations,” stated Wan Ziming from China. Senior Superintendent, Uttam Kumar Karkee, from Nepalese Police pointed out the necessity of joint efforts from the international community to fight effectively against wildlife crime and added, "Operation COBRA has proven itself to be an excellent model for fighting trans-national crime ". Adan Alio from LATF said that, “Our international team decided to focus on tracking and dismantling criminal networks. Until the top criminals are brought down, the poaching and illegal trade will continue.”
Una taarifa, picha za usafiri wa anga, mazingira, maliasili na utalii? tutumie kupitia kingkahindi@gmail.com Do you have any news about aviation services, environmental issues, natural resource and tourism? please do send it to kingkahindi@gmail.com
