EU Nature Protection Legislation – Focus on Species Protection

CITES tries to fight wildlife trafficking which has increased considerably over the last few decades and undermines the objectives and the legal provisions of the CITES Convention. In this framework, Together with INTERPOL, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the World Bank and the World Customs Organisation, CITES set up the "International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime" (ICCWC) in 2010. The consortium set itself the objective of supporting countries and regions in the enforcement of international and national law enforcement. It elaborated documents ("toolkits") to better tackle wildlife and forest crime, made available support teams which could assist countries where wildlife trafficking had occurred, and provided for extensive training programmes, in particular for developing countries. An intensive exchange of data among the members of ICCWC increases the efficiency of the consortium.

There is also close cooperation between CITES and TRAFFIC, a non-public alliance between the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), with offices in five continents, which has the objective of fighting wildlife trafficking by research, analysis of conservation problems, advising policymakers, informing and assisting local, regional and national authorities and supporting remedial action through training, capacity-building initiatives, technical advice and proposals for practical solutions. Additionally, the CITES closely cooperates with the International Tropical Timber Organisation (ITTO) in order to ensure that international trade in the CITES-listed timber species is consistent with their sustainable management and conservation.