More than two dozens of Vietnam ’s environmental police gather this week in Hanoi for four days of training on wildlife trade enforcement.
The training, led by German CITES experts, will focus on the regulations, implementation and enforcement of CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), the primary international agreement regulating trade in wildlife and wildlife products.
The workshop is one of two being conducted by the Greater Mekong office of TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, in cooperation with the German CITES Management Authority.
The training will be held in Hanoi for environmental officers from northern Vietnam , while the second will take place on Nov. 30 to Dec. 3 in HCM City for officers from southern provinces.
Both workshops are sponsored by the German Ministry for Environmental and the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BFN) and will include a field trip to nearby wildlife centres and farms to give trainees hands-on experience in animal identification and CITES compliance.
In Vietnam , as in other parts of Southeast Asia , the illicit wildlife trade has pushed species such as tigers, Asian elephants, Javan rhinoceros and hawksbill turles to the brink of extinction, and caused a sharp decline in wild populations of many others.
Although relatively new, the Department of Environmental Police has shown an ever-increasing commitment to ending wildlife trafficking since its inception in 2007. It has expanded to a force of nearly 1,000 officers stationed around the country, and has been increasingly more active in investigating and seizing illegal wildlife products.
The growing frequency of wildlife seizures by authorities indicates an improved understanding of illegal trafficking and CITES regulations, thanks in part to two previous training sessions conducted by TRAFFIC in 2008.