The United for Wildlife Transport Taskforce member organisations signed up to recommendations, with the historic first ever signing of a declaration at Buckingham Palace.
After 12 months of meetings in London, Geneva, and Dubai and thousands of hours of work by legal, conservation, transport, and customs experts, the Buckingham Palace Declaration has been agreed as an action plan to strengthen defences against trafficking.
The Buckingham Palace Declaration is a landmark agreement committing to take real steps to shut down the routes exploited by traffickers of the illegal wildlife trade moving their products.
The declaration takes steps to remove the vulnerabilities in transportation and customs to tackle the criminals currently exploiting them.
The declaration was signed by the taskforce members to represent their agreement to eleven commitments.
The commitments aim to help support the Private Sector in fighting the illegal wildlife trade and focus on:
1. Securing information sharing systems for the transport industry to receive credible information about high risk routes and methods of transportation
2. Developing a secure system for passing information about suspected illegal wildlife trade from the transport sector to relevant customs and law enforcement authorities
3. Notifying relevant law enforcement authorities of cargoes suspected of containing illegal wildlife and their products and, where able, refuse to accept or ship such cargoes.
The Buckingham Palace Declaration, developed by the United for Wildlife initiative, has created a global coalition to prevent traffickers from exploiting weaknesses as they seek to covertly move their products from killing field to marketplace.
On March 15 at Buckingham Palace, over 40 CEOs, Chairmen and leaders of airlines, shipping firms, port operators, customs agencies, intergovernmental organisations and conservation charities from around the world have signed the declaration.