New body established to fight environmental crime.

The CITES secretariat, INTERPOL, The World Customs Organisation (WCO) secretariat, The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the World Bank, have decided to come together to form a crime-fighting force utilising the experience of the different bodies to tackle environmental crime.

They said they need to see the sort of reaction to wildlife crime that we see in narcotic crime so that would be offenders are put off.

Challenges faced include cultural and language issues, and uncoordinated efforts.

They are trying to build an international database of offences so that they have more than anecdotal evidence to go on.

They want to act now, not get stuck in meetings.

The name of this new force is the International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime. (ICCWC)

Dave Higgins, INTERPOL's Environment Crime Manager, told us of 3 big success stories they have had recently: BAB, COSTA and TRAM (which was in 2010) See photo for details.

Botswana and Poland won awards for contributing to Ecomessage ~ the new database set up for documenting information so that it can be shared in order to fight crime.

Oh, and then a representative from Germany stood up and said he was from CIC, a hunting body, and that they wanted to participate and ensure that their trophy hunting did not overstep the mark into criminal activity.

More tomorrow.