Crime and punishment in the wildlife trade - WWF UK

Certainty would involve a radical change in resources devoted to enforcement, to engender
confidence that the law would be applied, and would be applied to all. Swiftness would entail
positive changes in the simplification, speed and processing of these cases. These pose
challenges to hard-pressed criminal justice and enforcement agencies.
The rewards of the illegal trade may be addressed through:
• market disruption strategies; 57 and
• awareness-raising to render the products less desirable.
Any positive changes in combating illegal wildlife trading would have to assume a position of
“no excuses”. This is not uncommon in relation to recent hardening of political attitudes to
youth offending and to mobile phone theft, for example. The issue of tolerance thresholds is a
linked, but more complex, one. One way in which illegal wildlife trading is “justified” in court
feeds on the notion of ignorance. For example, judges and magistrates do not assume that
defendants are ignorant of the fact that cannabis or heroin smuggling is illegal, yet they are
often persuaded that wildlife smugglers don’t realise that their actions are illegal and harmful.
Another way of addressing tolerance thresholds may be through a “due diligence” scheme
among legal traders. This would provide additional “soft” regulation by harnessing the expertise
and good practice of a group that could identify and isolate examples of illegal trading. There
are numerous examples of due diligence schemes covering many fields, and a number of
organisations seek to facilitate compliance 58 . For example, in the UK arts and antiques trade, the
Due Diligence Code 59 aims to promote ethical behaviour at all levels of the trade. Its provisions
cover dealers, auctioneers, museums and other industry professionals, and even extend to buyers
and collectors:
“Due diligence is a simple procedure that reduces unnecessary risk and obviates
the potentially damaging consequences of the unwitting purchase or sale of
stolen art.” 60
The scheme is linked to specialist arts and antiques police liaison officers, and in part relies on
an international standard for the description of art 61 . There are clearly many parallels between
the arts and antiques trade and the wildlife trade, and it may be that the infrastructure for due
diligence is essentially in place in the UK.
Applying the principles of maximising risk and reducing rewards, lowering tolerance and
denying excuses in relation to the illegal wildlife trade is not easy. In practice this would mean
the law and its sanctions must reflect more accurately the seriousness and the potential
seriousness of such offences. Low levels of sanctions (see Table 2), difficulties in interpretation,
the burden of proof and lack of resources provided to enforcers all compound the problem of
ensuring an effective response to the threat of the illegal wildlife trade.
57
See Roberts, et al: supra. p28.
58
See, for instance: Invaluable in relation to arts and antiques – www.invaluable.com; Valpak in relation to packaging
regulations – www.valpak.co.uk.
59
Launched by the Council for the Prevention of Art Theft (CoPAT) with Home Office backing in 1999.
www.invaluable.com/protect/products_dd.asp.
60 Ibid.
61 Object-ID. See: www.object-id.com.
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