Regional Workshop for Central Asia on Combating Illegal Wildlife Trade

Author: Bakytbek Tokubek uluu, TRAFFIC, www.traffic.org.

TRAFFIC in collaboration with Fauna & Flora and the Ministry of Natural Resources, Ecology, and Technical Supervision of the Kyrgyz Republic organised a regional workshop on Combating Illegal Wildlife Trade on July 4–6, 2023, in Bishkek, the Kyrgyz Republic.

The workshop was organised within the scope of two projects focusing on combating illegal wildlife trade in the Central Asian Region. The first one, titled “Strengthening Capacity and Fostering the Will to Combat Wildlife Crime in Central Asia,"  is funded by the United States Department of State Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) and runs from October 2021 until September 2025. The second project, titled “Building effective responses to illegal wildlife trade across Central Asia,” is funded by the United Kingdom’s Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund and runs from March 2021 until March 2024.  Both projects are led by Fauna & Flora and implemented in partnership with several organisations, including TRAFFIC, the Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity of Kazakhstan (ACBK), the Institute of Zoology of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan, and the Ecological Resource Center “Ekomaktab” from Uzbekistan.

Both projects focus on combating wildlife trafficking in Central Asia, which affects several CAMI species such as the Saiga Antelope, Argali, Goitered Gazelle, and Snow Leopard. As part of the project, a series of training workshops were organised. In addition, sniffer dog programmes were supported, and different tools, such as training manuals, were prepared. TRAFFIC undertook a needs assessment of the capacities across the region, prepared an analysis of the legal frameworks of the countries, and collected information on illegal and legal trade trends over the last ten years in the region. The results of these efforts on quantifying wild species trade in Central Asia are presented in three reports that are available on the official site of TRAFFIC.

The workshop in Bishkek in July 2024 aimed to review some of the project results, raise awareness of the importance of combating wildlife trafficking in the region, and support such efforts through technical training and practical tools. Participants included key governmental organisations from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, as well as China, the United Kingdom, the United States, the European Union, CITES, and NGOs working in the field of Central Asian biodiversity conservation.

Over the three days, in addition to presenting current information and discussing challenges in combating illegal wildlife trade, technical knowledge and practical tools were shared to enable the participants to effectively combat illegal trade.