Enforcement and Law

Big Idea: To combat key wildlife crime and demonstrably reduce poaching or trade in at least six taxa or geographies.

This division aims to reduce wildlife crime by assisting enforcement agencies in:

1. Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT) control
2. Championing litigation against wildlife crime in trial courts and
3. Strengthening frontline field staff through training, capacity building and morale boosting.

Trade control works through various projects across the country to assist enforcement agencies through field-level support. Information regarding IWT is shared with the state forest departments, Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) and other enforcement agencies for necessary action. The division has assisted in several raids and over 320 seizures of wildlife articles ranging from tiger bones and skins, ivory, shahtoosh shawls and wool, bear bile, and hathajodi to mongoose hair and brushes.

Under Pan India Enforcement Assistance, the division assists in the prosecution of wildlife offenders by providing legal intervention and assistance at the District and High Court levels. This ensures that suspects who are involved in IWT face a fair trial and legal procedure as per the laws of the country. The organization has assisted agencies in some high-profile cases in the past including the ones against Late Sansar Chand, Salman Khan and MAK Pataudi.

Recognising that the safety of Indian wildlife relies heavily on the forest staff, WTI established the ‘Guardians of the Wild’ cell to support those who look after wildlife. It comprises a group of skilled trainers who work closely with the forest department’s frontline field staff. These trainers assist in honing their skills, boosting morale, and equipping them to perform their duties better. Covering a wide range of subjects that include wildlife and criminal law, court procedures and ethical law enforcement practices, the trainers supplement their skills to create a strong, well-equipped, and motivated force of frontline field staff. The cell has trained and equipped over 20,000 field staff in over 150 protected areas of India and transboundary areas of Bhutan.

WTI’s Guardians of the Wild Project, known as the Van Rakshak Project in Hindi, is dedicated to safeguarding the ‘protectors of wildlife’ through training and capacity building. WTI also runs the only pan-India NGO Supplementary Accident Assurance scheme to bring all the frontline field wildlife staff in the country under an ex-gratia umbrella, under our Van Rakshak project.

Current Projects Involved:

1. Hostile Activity Watch Kernel, Kerela & Karnataka: Design and implementation of the centralized  Forest and Wildlife Crime Management system across the state.
2. Wildlife Crime Prevention Assistance in Karnataka: Provide front line staff training, Conduct Anti-Snare walks, formation of Primary Response Teams across six Tiger Reserves of Karnataka.
3. Strengthening Cross Border Wildlife Crime Prevention and Law Enforcement between India and Nepal: Front line staff training, Anti-Snare walks, Legal assistance in trial courts and community based preventive initiatives to counter IWT in the Indo-Nepal border area
4. Pan India Enforcement Assistance: Provide operational assistance to enforcement and law agencies to counter IWT through the sharing of information, resource and operational support.
5. Curbing Illegal wildlife trade in Pangolins, Manipur: Provide training to frontline and enforcement staff, across the state of Manipur to counter IWT (especially in Pangolin) in the Indo-Mayanmar area.
6. Capacitate Legal Assistance against Wildlife crime (CLAW): Capacitate Legal Assistance against Wildlife crime (CLAW) project aids WTI to spearhead the legal analysis efforts in India and to build a case-selection framework involving Indian Elephant (Elephas maximus indicus) poaching cases.