Tackling the illegal ivory trade: an online training tool for enforcement

We not only expose environmental crime and abuse, we also work with governments to try to raise awareness and improve capacity.

For the past two-and-a-half years, we have been capturing best-practice enforcement techniques used to combat the illegal ivory trade, travelling to more than 12 countries to film and interview enforcement practitioners in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. The results have been packaged up into an interactive training tool to assist enforcement personnel and agencies around the world.

This training tool includes a short film that provides a broad overview of the entire illegal ivory trade chain and the enforcement responses at different points. Linked within this are 17 short modules providing examples on the more specialised techniques such as the use of trained sniffer dogs, crime scene forensics and controlled deliveries.

English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Swahili, Mandarin, Cantonese, Thai and Vietnamese language versions have been produced or are under development.

We’re extremely grateful to the rangers, customs officers and many other types of enforcement personnel who took the time to help us and, in many cases, granted us rare behind-the-scenes access. We’d also like to extend our gratitude to everyone who helps fund our work to make ambitious, game-changing projects such as this possible.

We’re incredibly proud of what we’ve achieved together and are confident that it will be a vital training resource in the fight against the ivory trade.

For security reasons, we aren’t able to share the website with you (it’s a password-protected site for enforcement personnel only) but we hope you enjoy this short snapshot of the online tool: