Wildlife Trade Reported to be the 3rd Largest Illegal Trade Globally

Guwahati, August 7, 2019:

To sensitize the Border Security Forces personnel about the magnitude and impact of wildlife poaching and illegal wildlife trade and to highlight the inevitable need for inter-agency co-operation for eradicating this threat to wildlife, a seminar on “Conservation of Wildlife & Prevention of Wildlife Crime” was conducted on Tuesday.

The event was organized at Frontier HQ BSF Patgaon, Guwahati in association with official of Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB).

Piyush Mordia, Inspector General, BSF Guwahati Frontier mentioned about the importance of the seminar on Conservation of Wildlife and Prevention of Wildlife Crime.

He also mentioned that illegal wildlife trade is reported to be the third largest global illegal trade after narcotics and human trafficking. "It is a lucrative business for criminal syndicates because the risk involved is low compared to other crimes and high profits can be generated", he said.

“Illegal wildlife trade hinders social and economic development, including potential economic loss for governments, and has direct consequences on rule of law, national and international security and the environment,” he added.

On the other hand, Piyush Mordia made an appeal to the BSF personnel to put forward strong and candid view about how agencies can coordinate and formulate a long term strategy for protection of forest and wild animals.

Mordia also empathized that prevention of wildlife crime is very important. “Some Anti-National Elements are trying to smugglewild animals on Indo-Bangladesh border however, due toalertness of BSF troops they could not succeed to smuggle such trans-border crimes.

He emphasised thatit is necessary to prevent theWildlife Crime,” he added.

J K Rudola, DIG Frontier HQ BSF Patgaon, Guwahati expressed the need to upgrade technology of current systems to detect wildlife crime in a more effective manner, strengthen the wildlife forensic capacity of the country and suggested mobile forensic labs for identifying wildlife contrabands in transit.

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