Vietnam, Laos, China Jointly Combat Transnational Wildlife Trafficking

Frontline enforcement officers from key provinces, ports and border posts in Vietnam, Laos, and China have conducted a field mission, the first of its kind, with an aim to enhance cooperation against inter-boundary wildlife trade. The inter-agency field mission made from Chinese Guangzhou to Vientiane to focus on trade route across Indo-Burma, a biodiversity hotspot designated by Conservation International. Contents, which is believed to cover the most significant illegal flows of elephant ivory, pangolins scales, tiger bones, and freshwater turtles and tortoises. The event aims to share experiences, approaches and update the situation on wildlife smuggling networks along the major Indo-Burma trade route, the hotspot of 2.37 million square kilometers of tropical Asia east of the Ganges-Brahmaputra lowlands. Throughout the mission, participants visited key sites along the trafficking network such as the Qingping traditional medicine market in Guangzhou and significant smuggling points along international borders. Meetings with local officers were held to better understand the situation on the ground, build relationships, share intelligence on recent cases and enhance strategies for cooperative actions. In order to summarize the results of the mission, the Department of Forest Inspection (DoFI) of Lao PDR hosted a meeting in Vientiane where participants discussed challenges to effective transnational cooperation and drafted a roadmap for collaboration in 2016. This included establishing direct communication protocols and mainstreaming wildlife trafficking into bi-lateral meetings between frontline agencies through the development of further bilateral agreements between neighboring provinces. The mission was hosted by the CITES Management Authority of China and Vietnam, the Department of Forest Inspection (Lao PDR), facilitated by Wildlife Conservation Association (WCS) and the Chinese WCS, with support from the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) and the blue moon fund. WCS is a US nonprofit, tax-exempt, private organization established in 1895 that saves wildlife and wild places worldwide through science, conservation action, education, and inspiring people to value nature. Vietnam and China are two world top destinations for transnational wildlife smuggling. (www.newswise.com April 7)