India bags UN award for combating transborder environmental crime
WCCB members on an awareness programme on illegal trade of endangered animals
United Nation Environment has awarded the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) of India’s ministry of environment, forest and climate change with the Asia Environment Enforcement Awards, 2018 for excellent work done by the bureau in combating transborder environmental crime.
Harsh Vardhan, Union Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, congratulated the Bureau for the achievement.
“The Asia Environmental Enforcement Award recognizes the excellent work done by Government officials and teams from the team, who is diligently involved in combating transboundary environmental crime,” said the minister
Illegal possession of elephant tusks and rhino horns seized by WCCB
The Asia Environment Enforcement Awards publicly recognize and celebrate excellence in enforcement by government officials and institutions and teams combating transboundary environmental crime in Asia. The awards are given to outstanding individuals and/or government organizations and teams that demonstrate excellence and leadership in enforcement of national laws to combat transboundary environmental crime in one of the following eligibility criteria areas: collaboration; impact; innovation; integrity and gender leadership.
“Humanity is the guardian of the natural world, and these winners are at the tip of the spear. Without their commitment to justice, our environmental laws and safeguards are a paper tiger. And though their work may often go unrecognised, it is their qualities of courage, dedication and integrity we need to see more of to preserve our planet.” said Dechen Tsering, UN Environment Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific.
Illegal traders of tiger skin captured by WCCB
WCCB has been conferred this award in Innovation category. WCCB has adopted innovative enforcement techniques that have dramatically increased enforcement of transboundary environmental crimes in India. Notably it has developed an online Wildlife Crime Database Management System to get real time data in order to help analyse trends in crime and devise effective measures to prevent and detect wildlife crimes across India.
This system has been successfully used to analyse trends, helping put in preventive measures as well as for successfully carrying out operations such as Operation ‘Save Kurma, Thunderbird’, Wildnet, Lesknow, Birbil, Thunderstorm, Lesknow-II along with other enforcement agencies.
The bureau has recorded arrest of 350 wildlife criminals and huge seizures of Tiger and Leopard Skin, bones and other trophies, Rhino Horn, Elephant Ivory, turtles, tortoises, mongoose raw hairs as well as mongoose hair brushes, protected birds, Marine products, live Pangolin as well as its scales, deer antlers etc. across all the states.
In order to involve the public in the fight against wildlife crime, WCCB has also developed a scheme to enroll willing persons as WCCB Volunteers.
The award was decided upon by a selection panel set up by the UN Environment and this is the second time in a row the awards are being given by UN Environment to India.