The CWC Activity is supporting the Ministry of Tourism Wildlife and Antiquities, Uganda Wildlife Authority and other government agencies to design, test, and implement software application and systems aimed at capturing high quality data, analysis to inform anti wildlife crime approaches, improve wildlife deterrence, detection, enforcement, and prosecution.
CITES e-permit for MTWA
The CITES permit system is the backbone of regulation of trade in specimens of species, included in the three Appendices of the Convention. WCS through the USAID/CWC Activity supported MTWA to upgrade and popularize the system. Follow the link to find out how it works. https://cites.tourism.go.ug/how-to-apply
OWODAT systems upgrade
WCS and UWA worked with 8techtechnogolies to develop an Online Wildlife Offender’s Database (OWODAT) The database can be accessed on the internet, desktop and on mobile devices in all protected areas. Read more stories here.
Sniffer Dogs Project
WCS through the USAID/CWC Activity and AWF are supporting UWA Karuma Wildlife Project to use sniffer dogs in combating wildlife crime in North and Western Nile of Uganda border points. These areas have in the past been source and transit routes for wildlife products from DR Congo, South Sudan, and Central African Republic.
SMART Conservation Software
SMART Tools are open-source, non-proprietary, and freely available. SMART is a suite of tools that enables you to collect, store, communicate, and evaluate data on wildlife and conservation areas. https://smartconservationtools.org/en-us
CWC/ USAID Activity is supporting UWA, NFA to customize SMART to suit specific needs and contexts and evaluate conservation efforts to improve conservation management.
Investigative training for law enforcement staff
CWC Activity is supporting UWA to increase their capacity in conducting successful wildlife crime investigations.
This involves working with partners to deliver high impact hands on training, knowledge, and skills on:
- How to manage wildlife crime scenes.
- Writing witness statements.
- Collecting viable intelligence information.
- How to handle cyber cases that involve wildlife.
- Interagency cooperation to dismantle, deter, detain, and detain wildlife criminals.
Financial Institutions Compliance awareness training
At WCS, we believe that financial compliance through awareness and training for bankers and mobile money dealers is an important tool for in tracing, tracking suspicious transactions linked to IWT. We need to ensure that wildlife criminals don’t clean-up IWT money in the financial sector. In collaboration with the Government of Uganda enforcement agencies, Implementing Partners such as RUSI and UBA through the support of USAID/ CWC activity. We will continue to engage the Bank of Uganda, the financial sector and mobile money players to enlist their compliance on emerging financial regulations, cyber-crime, and its impact on IWT. Our dream is to make wildlife crime a very risky venture and ensure that we don’t only trace the money, but all the financial proceeds gained through IWT.
Through this intervention, we hope to help reduce the risk of criminals using the financial sector to cleanse and deprive Ugandans of the incredible wildlife resources as few of them profiteer.