This division seeks to curb wildlife trade by intelligence gathering, database maintaining and assisting enforcement agencies in seizures of wildlife and its derivatives and to build capacity among enforcement personnel for strict implementation of enforcement laws.

Its main objectives are;

• To collect overt and covert intelligence on wildlife criminals and their derivatives.

• To assist Government enforcement authorities in seizing wildlife articles.

• To maintain the wildlife crime control database and national elephant mortality database and evaluate data to curb wildlife poaching and trade.

• To sensitize enforcement personnel on wildlife crime through specific training modules.

• To evaluate capacity needs of the authorities and fill the gaps by bringing out reports / publications on the subject matter.

• To train enforcement staff for specific crime busting skills.

While two other divisions in this programme concentrate on data collection and analyses, this division is the cutting edge of this programme where wildlife criminals are nabbed and smuggling or poaching rings broken. As NGOs do not have specific enforcement authorization, this division will assist the enforcement authorities and authorized personnel to seize illicit contraband wildlife and wildlife articles and develop intelligence to nab the wildlife criminals.

Wildlife crime gets recorded through official seizure data, case records from designated courts, media reports or first hand intelligence reports. Such data will be collected and entered in the wildlife crime control database using a system of confidence levels and crosschecking mechanisms. Data from this database is analyzed and shared with enforcement agencies for checking repeat offenders and checking the trend of wildlife crime in the country. For example elephant mortality data have been collected historically by the organization and a national level database is in place. This helps monitor the trend in elephant deaths allowing for management and policy decisions at the national and international level.

If you need more information about this programme, please write to us at - info@wti.org.in