Investigating and Prosecuting Wildlife Crime

A poaching conspiracy, for instance, may involve residents in suitable habitat being recruited to hunt elephants and being supplied with the necessary tools to kill the animal; firearms and ammunition, snares or poison. Once the animal has been killed, its tusks will be removed and delivered to the person responsible for organising the poaching. Thereafter, the tusks will be moved to dealers, who will arrange for their delivery to couriers, and their concealment and subsequent smuggling out of the country, via land, sea or air.

This national ‘chain of criminality’ involves separate points where many individual actors will undertake different, but linked, crimes; all assembling into a conspiracy. This in-country conspiracy will then connect, since the final consumer is likely to be in another country, to another conspiracy in a different nation, which will handle illegal import and the various other illicit stages necessary for the contraband to pass through before delivery and sale to the final customer. The second conspiracy will also involve numerous actors.

Although the likelihood of each and every actor in each and every stage of the conspiracies being identified and brought to justice may be remote, opportunities to arrest several of them are likely to be present and the collection of evidence to demonstrate the existence of the conspiracy to a court ought to be perfectly achievable. In this way, it should be possible to prosecute each actor as a conspirator, rather than an individual engaged in some isolated or separate offence.

Since most conspiracy statutes provide an extensive range of penalties, judges should be in a position to allocate appropriate sentences to each accused, reflecting his or her involvement in, and contribution to, the overall conspiracy.

Lastly, it will be vital to seek possibilities to use relevant laws to seize, and recover, assets obtained by those involved as a result of their participation in wildlife crime and trafficking.