World's police unite for environmental crime crackdown
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INTERPOL's Environmental Crime Programme works to provide assistance and support in the enforcement of national and international environmental laws and treaties by working alongside the 188 INTERPOL member countries and their Environmental Crime Committee.
Scanlon said the recent success of INTERPOL's Operation RAMP, a worldwide operation targeting the illegal trade and possession of reptiles and amphibians, is a "prime example of the global law enforcement community's willingness and desire to work together in stemming the effects of environmental crime."
The two month-long RAMP operation in September and October involved law enforcement agencies in 51 countries across five continents taking action against the illegal trade in reptiles and amphibians. It resulted in arrests worldwide and the seizure of thousands of animals as well as of products worth more than 25 million euros.
INTERPOL's Environmental Crime Programme unit was the operational communications and intelligence center, facilitating the exchange of information among the police of participanting countries.
"Our goal in Operation RAMP was to detect and apprehend suspected wildlife criminals, whilst also furthering co-operation and collaboration between agencies and countries in an effort to enhance the fight against organized environmental crime," said Bernd Rossbach, director of INTERPOL's Specialized Crime unit.
"While investigations will continue well beyond the conclusion of Operation RAMP, this operation has shown what the international law enforcement community can collaboratively achieve against suspected environmental criminals and their networks," said Rossbach. "The success of this operation would not have been possible without the close cooperation and dedication of the police, customs, wildlife law enforcement agencies and specialized units in all of the participating countries."
In his address to INTERPOL delegates in Doha, Scanlon expressed empathy for the men and women on the front lines of wildlife crime intervention, especially in the developing world, who are not police but work in national parks departments, ministries of forestry, fishery protection agencies, or wildlife authorities.
"The men and women of these bodies do excellent work, much of it revolving around protecting species in their habitats and ensuring they are not poached or illegally harvested. Such activities regularly expose them, not only to encounters with heavily-armed poachers, but also to hazardous terrain and to diseases ranging from dengue fever to malaria. Every year, forest guards, game scouts, fishery officers, and park rangers will die or be seriously injured whilst performing their duties," said Scanlon.
"These rangers, and their counterparts elsewhere, seldom have the training, equipment, and certainly not the salaries, to match those of their colleagues in Customs and Police authorities," Scanlon said.
Recognizing this, the CITES and INTERPOL secretariats have jointly published manuals smuggling concealment methods, and the questioning of smugglers. The two intergovernmental agencies, with their colleagues in the World Customs Organization, have jointly delivered, or facilitated, national and sub-regional training workshops.
To strengthen this tripartite effort, Scanlon said a new wildlife enforcement group, the International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime, will be introduced at the Global Tiger Summit in St. Petersburg later this month.
This consortium will bring the United Nations' Office on Drugs and Crime and the World Bank into the partnership.
"The International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime - or ICCWC for short - is intended to introduce a new era to wildlife law enforcement," Scanlon said. "An era where those organized criminal networks that seek to rob countries of their natural resources, often exploiting the poor inhabitants of rural communities and corrupting officials, will face a determined and coordinated opposition, rather than the current situation where, all too often, the risk of detection, and imposition of penalties that match their crimes, are low or absent."
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