Wildlife Enforcement Networks (WEN) Fact Sheet

Wildlife Enforcement Networks ( WENs ) A model for combatting national and transnational wildlife crime Organized commercial poaching and wildlife trafficking threaten wildlife around the world, devastating local ecosystems and harming essential environmental services such as the provision of fresh water, food production, and climate stability. Illicit wildlife trade empowers transnational organized crime syndicates linked to human trafficking, narcotics trade, and terrorism and poses an immediate threat to human health through zoonotic diseases.

Criminal syndicates continue to reap billions of dollars in illicit profits at the expense of wildlife and human security. Wildlife Enforcement Networks (WENs) are a crucial tool to combat this transnational crime.

A Wildlife Enforcement Network or WEN is: • A multi-agency, intergovernmental law-enforcement network made up of multiple countries within one region, designed to combat the illegal wildlife trade at a regional scale; • A platform for regional collaboration between national law enforcement agencies, CITES authorities, customs, police, prosecutors, and specialized wildlife enforcement groups; • A mechanism for countries to monitor wildlife crime, share information, develop capacity for enforcement and investigations, and learn from each other's best practices; and • A proactive regional response to alarming levels of wildlife trafficking and species loss.

National

Each country in the network establishes a multi-agency task force (a national WEN) comprised of police, customs, environmental officers (such as CITES), prosecutors and other relevant agencies.

The “country-WEN” may establish one coordinating agency to plan meetings, training and enforcement actions, while also acting as the cross-border focal point with other WENs; or rotate the national coordinating role and position all member agencies as focal points with other national WENs.

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Regional National WEN task forces team up to form the backbone of the regional WEN. Focal points from each agency share intelligence, including through regional working groups. A typical set of regional working groups would include: (a) investigations; (b) capacity building; and (c) communications and sustainability .

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Wildlife Enforcement Networks WENs are easy to form and join: membership does not require change in national legislation. WENs focus on establishing national focal points, working directly with one another, or through their regional secretariat.

WEN COORDINATING HUB

In Southeast Asia the ASEAN-WEN’s administrative hub – the Program Coordination Unit (PCU) – facilitates and coordinates technical support for the network. The PCU organizes regional meetings, seminars, workshops, exchanges and training programs, with guidance and support from the ASEAN Secretariat. The network also operates a Law Enforcement Extension Office (LEEO) to support regional intelligence exchange; this keeps sensitive law enforcement matters separate from administrative ones. WENs build relationships and share information.

WHY ARE WENs IMPORTANT?

International wildlife trafficking syndicates benefit from corruption, ill-equipped law enforcement, and a lack of cross-border collaboration. Often the task of investigating and apprehending wildlife offenders is left to environmental agencies which frequently lack the authority or the capacity to stop major wildlife crimes. WENs facilitate the participation of police and Customs officers in wildlife crime enforcement. WENs are expanding their global reach through the development of new partnerships, including with WCO, UNODC, CITES, INTERPOL, Lusaka Agreement Task Force (LATF), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Forest Service, and more. To improve capacity of networks, interagency task forces are being trained in investigations while border officers, judges, and prosecutors are also attending seminars and workshops to increase their knowledge of wildlife crime.

THE WEN MODEL WORKS

• ASEAN-WEN has significantly improved efforts to end illegal trade, enabling an 11-fold increase in major wildlife law enforcement actions from 2008-2012.

• In 2013 and 2014, ASEAN-WEN, South Asia (SA-WEN), NICE-CG (China-WEN), and LATF implemented the successful Operation Cobra I and II, which led to unprecedented cross-continental law enforcement actions that netted elephant ivory and rhino horn trafficking rings.

• WENs have helped facilitate the training of thousands of people from hundreds of government agencies in nature crime investigation, anti-poaching, species identification, wildlife trade regulation and law.

KEYS TO WEN SUSTAINABILITY

• Institutionalizing capacity building; • Making task forces and their national and regional hubs permanent structures with permanent government budget lines; • Solid branding that lends itself to national government and regional intergovernmental body ownership; • Civil society engagement: NGOs that support, and when necessary, watchdog WENs to help improve wildlife enforcement governance.

ORIGIN AND EXPANSION OF THE WEN MODEL

The WEN was conceived by a group of governmental and non-governmental officers during an Asian regional training course on wildlife crime in 2002. The concept was then shared with the Government of Thailand prior to hosting 13th UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES COP-13) in 2004. During the CITES COP-13 meeting, the Thai government proposed creation of a network for wildlife law enforcement among ASEAN countries. With support from the U.S. Government, ASEAN-WEN was formally launched on December 1, 2005 and was then further developed through the USAID-funded ASEAN-WEN Support Program and its follow-on Asia’s Regional Response to Endangered Species Trafficking Program, led by Freeland in partnership with ASEAN, other U.S. Government agencies, and civil society groups. The WEN concept has since been replicated by South Asia (SA-WEN), China (NICE-CG), Central America (CA-WEN), with a network emerging in the Horn of Africa (HA-WEN), and interest growing in a Southern Africa network (WEN-SA ) and West Asia network (WA-WEN).

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