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Eurasian Black Vulture / Aegypius monachus, Yves Adams

Eurasian Black Vulture / Aegypius monachus, Yves Adams

Wildlife Crime Academy: using forensic science to solve wildlife crimes across nine countries

August 24, 2022
Categories
  • Albania
  • Croatia
  • Egyptian Vulture
  • Greece
  • Macedonia
  • Serbia
Tags
AlbaniaCroatiaGreeceMacedoniaSerbia

Original article: https://balkandetoxlife.eu/2021/07/06/first-wildlife-crime-academy/

Let’s be honest: death plays a significant part in wildlife conservation. Conservationists can spend years protecting wild species and their habitats, and suddenly one illegal poisoning incident can wipe out an entire vulture colony in the Republic of North Macedonia, poachers in Bulgaria can kill a recently re-introduced Cinereous Vulture, or combining these illegal practices can bring the Egyptian Vulture to the edge of extinction in Greece. But these animals do not have to die in vain.

Poisoning, poaching, trapping, collision, electrocution, and illegal trade are all examples of severe wildlife crimes but are all overlooked and under-prosecuted. Why is that? Well for starters, the victims of these crimes do not have a voice, making them powerless unless people care. Secondly, when it comes to solving these crimes, investigators face several setbacks such as remote crime scenes with degrading evidence, unreliable or no witnesses, nonexistent protocols, and lack of specific training. It is urgent to prioritise and fight these crimes head-on by conducting proper investigations and achieving convictions to deter similar cases from occurring again, since impunity is often an invitation for people to continue to kill and poison wildlife. This is where the Wildlife Crime Academy (WCA) comes in to bridge the knowledge and capacity gaps, and change the attitude towards wildlife crime to be treated like any other crime.

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Stichting BirdLife Europe and BirdLife International gratefully acknowledge financial support from the MAVA Foundation, the EU LIFE programme, the European Commission and Vogelbescherming Nederland (BirdLife Netherlands).
All content and opinions expressed on these pages are solely those of Stichting BirdLife Europe.
"Flight for Survival" is partially funded by the LIFE Against Bird Crime project. More information is available here.

Over 25 000 000 million birds are illegally killed around the Mediterranean, Northern Europe and the Caucasus every year. For non-rounded, mean numbers, and minimum/maximum estimates, see: Preliminary assessment of the scope and scale of illegal killing and taking of birds in the Mediterranean (Brochet et al 2016) and Illegal killing and taking of Birds in Europe outside the Mediterranean: assessing the scope and scale of a complex issue (Brochet et al., 2018)

“Flight for Survival” is a BirdLife International campaign managed by Stichting BirdLife Europe to raise awareness about the illegal killing of birds in Italy, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Egypt, Lebanon, Bulgaria and Hungary, and their conservation activities to fight this.” The species storylines for this campaign are heavily inspired by the information available on the migration habits of the selected birds.

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