Page 84 - DRI ANNUAL REPORT EBOOK

Challenge
One of the challenges all Customs and law enforcement officers face is the sheer volume of international traffic. Another challenge facing Customs officials is the ever-changing methods that criminals use to smuggle wildlife products. Organized and well-connected criminal gangs blend illegal consignments with the huge volume of legitimate trade. New means of concealment are invented all the time, including ways to camouflage illegal products. For instance, rhino horn or ivory may be cut and painted to make it more difficult to detect. Other methods include blending non-protected species with protected ones or using fraudulent documents.
Every year, thousands of species are taken from their natural habitats and brought into wildlife trade to be sold for their meat, parts and derivatives, or as pets. Natural barriers between humans and animals and their pathogens are removed as a result of global wildlife trade. Unregulated wet markets trading in wildlife risk becoming potential origins of zoonotic disease pandemics due to a heavy footfall of citizens, high interactions of humans with an array of species and lack of adequate sanitary measures.
The proliferation of air transport has exacerbated the issue even further; a trip that once would have taken months by land and by sea may now take 24 hours or less of travel in comparative calm and comfort. While these changes have been boons for the global economy, they have also put wildlife at risk like never before. The negative side effects of this economic progress are immediately evident in the substantial population decline of vulnerable species over the past few decades alone. If wildlife poaching and trafficking continues unabated at this scale, regional ecosystems face not just species extinction, but complete collapse. In the face of such catastrophic overexploitation, steps must be taken to reverse the damage caused by the creation of a global marketplace.
DRI is a major contributor to conservation of nature and natural resources, both flora and fauna, as part of Green Customs initiative of World Customs Organization. Indian Customs alongwith the DRI have made significant seizures of wildlife contraband like Rhino horn, Pangolin scales, Tiger and Leopard claws, bones and skins, Elephant tusks, star tortoise, Red Sanders, Snakes, Sea Urchins, Sea Cucumbers, Raptors, etc.
50 SMUGGLING IN INDIA REPORT 2019-20