Partners
International Fund for Animal Welfare
Founded in 1969, IFAW works around the globe for a world in which cruel and ecologically unsustainable trade in wild animals is eradicated. It does this by focusing on the increased application of the precautionary principle by wildlife trade relevant international conventions, treaties and legislation, through enhanced compliance and enforcement regimes to eliminate illegal wildlife trade, by increasing consumer awareness of the impacts that trade in wildlife has on conservation and animal welfare and through emergency response.
1) IFAW is a driving force behind many conservation efforts within the framework of national legislation and international conventions. In lobbying governments and delegates to the various intergovernmental conservation treaties, IFAW’s advocacy campaigns draw upon well-researched and factual arguments to give voice to the many individual pro-conservation constituents with no access to the international stage. In particular,
- IFAW was instrumental in bringing like-minded Anglophone and Francophone African elephant range states together to create an African bloc for conservation at the recent,14th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to CITES in the Hague, June 3-15, 2007. This resulted in the landmark approval of a nine-year suspension of trade in elephant ivory (including a suspension of any discussions of ivory trade at CITES CoPs).
- Efforts to encourage Latin American and Eastern European International Whaling Commission members to vote in favor of whale conservation at the March 2007 meeting of the IWC were successful.
- Campaigning by IFAW for the adoption by the IWC of a resolution calling on the U.N. Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES) to respect the moratorium on commercial whaling was met with resounding success. This resolution laid the foundation for the success of IFAW’s CITES team a week later in Den Haag, Netherlands where efforts by Japan and Iceland to use CITES to undermine protections for the great whales were thwarted.
2) IFAW collaborates in many ways with international and national enforcement agencies to assist their efforts to fight wildlife crime:
- IFAW partners with Interpol on the agency’s Ecomessage system, a mechanism for exchanging information on wildlife crime. Reporting of wildlife crime to the Ecomessage system has increased five-fold since IFAW first became involved, and Interpol has as a result been successful in the past few years in busting significant wildlife trafficking syndicates.
- As part of IFAW’s implementation and enforcement initiatives, IFAW has been working with national governments to organize and conduct wildlife trade law enforcement training and workshops. These training sessions are attended by enforcement officials from customs, police and other relevant authorities and the Environmental Ministries. The training is aimed at educating officials about their rights and obligations, and enhancing their capability to strictly control wildlife trade in their country. Recently, IFAW held trainings in Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Syria, Yemen, China, Libya and India (conducted by IFAW’s partner WTI), countries at crucial crossroads connecting African supply countries with Europe and the Far East.
- IFAW is active in supporting the science of tracking illegal wildlife crime through a number of campaign efforts. DNA analysis is being used in Japan and Korea to identify whale species being traded for meat. IFAW also supported the pilot project by Sam Wasser at the University of Washington, US, in developing an innovative new method for analyzing elephant ivory specimens which allows the tracking elephant ivory "hot spots" and key smuggling routes. As a result, enforcement agencies are now able to focus their limited enforcement capacities in target areas.
- The IFAW China office, through the Asian Elephant Protection (AEP) Project, is leading significant efforts on behalf of elephant conservation, such as anti-poaching patrols, community education, elephant population monitoring, individual elephant identification, and behavior studies.
- The poaching problem plaguing the Zakouma National Park region of the Central African nation of Chad is being addressed by IFAW with a grant to support the training of officers, purchase of equipment, horses and materials as well as animal feed and healthcare.
- IFAW is funding the field investigations into Sumatran elephant ivory trade and also other wildlife trade. This involves the collection of comprehensive data, as well as the uncovering and obtaining of evidence such as photos or video of actual wildlife trafficking in Sumatra. The purpose is for this data and evidence to be used to put pressure on the government and the law enforcement agencies to tighten control.
3. Public awareness has the potential in and of itself to be the agent of change. IFAW’s educational campaigns have the multiple goal of raising awareness on issues of wildlife trade, influencing politicians, and changing social behavior, such as encouraging consumers to make informed decisions with the products they buy.
- Consumers of wildlife are at the nexus of wildlife trade, and expanding economies and increased purchasing power worldwide have resulted in increased demand for wildlife products. By launching its "Think Twice!" campaign, IFAW's goal is to educate consumers as to the impact that their animal-based purchases have on vulnerable wild animal populations. "Think Twice!" also offers solutions that redirect tourist dollars to a local souvenir economy better representative of local cultures and customs.
- A series of IFAW investigations into the illegal trade of wildlife on the Internet, particularly on Ebay, garnered an enormous amount of press coverage. As a result of this and IFAW’s coordinated lobbying efforts, Ebay announced its new policy to ban cross-border trade in elephant ivory, saying that “it was the right thing to do.”
- Seeking to combat the promotion of parts and derivatives taken from endangered species for use in alternative remedies, IFAW works together with organizations such as the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine and the World Society for Traditional Chinese Medicine to educate consumers of the effective, plant-based alternative ingredients to those derived from endangered species. Traditional medicines containing poached animal parts, including tiger bone, bear gallbladder, musk deer, Saiga antelope and rhinoceros horn, continue to be marketed to consumers and practitioners worldwide by manufacturers not sanctioned by either local governments or legitimate practitioners of traditional medicine.
- IFAW leadership of the Whales Need US coalition, an unprecedented coalition of U.S. animal welfare and environmental groups, was key in galvanizing U.S. leadership in preventing a return to commercial whaling via public relations and political efforts. In addition to generating visible public messaging and support for a strengthened U.S. position, the group successfully organized a letter from the House of Representatives to the U.S. IWC delegation demanding U.S. leadership and a strong position with respect to whale conservation.
- IFAW’s launch of an international campaign against Iceland’s return to commercial whaling resulted in significant Icelandic domestic debate on the issue. Signals are that the embers of commercial whaling are dying in Iceland. To date, the meat has not been traded internationally with Japan, the only available trading partner, and there are no plans re-issue the commercial quota.
4. Recognizing that wildlife crime often goes hand-in-hand with recovery of live trafficked animals, IFAW’s emergency response team remains prepared and on constant high alert for situations where rehabilitation and/or re-wilding are appropriate.
- After four gorillas were illegally exported from Nigeria, via South Africa, to the Taiping Zoo in Malaysia in January 2002, IFAW has been working to facilitate the transfer of the “Taiping 4” gorillas to the Limbe Wildlife Centre sanctuary in Cameroon.
- IFAW-supported rehab centers provide critical and life-saving care to recovered animals from attempted smuggling operations and to infant wildlife orphaned by poaching. Recently (beginning of 2007), four tiger cubs were rescued by IFAW and the Federal Governmental Administration Special Inspection “Tiger” on Primorye Territory in Russia’s Far East. In October 2006, five rare and endangered Gyrfalcons – prized as the best possible bird for falconry since the Middle Ages - were confiscated in Moscow. Four of the birds were sent by Russia’s environmental watchdog to IFAW’s wildlife rehabilitation center in Moscow, where they were fully rehabilitated and released to the wild on the Kamchatka peninsula.
To learn how you can help, please visit www.ifaw.org.
Founded in 1969, IFAW works around the globe for a world in which cruel and ecologically unsustainable trade in wild animals is eradicated. It does this by focusing on the increased application of the precautionary principle by wildlife trade relevant international conventions, treaties and legislation, through enhanced compliance and enforcement regimes to eliminate illegal wildlife trade, by increasing consumer awareness of the impacts that trade in wildlife has on conservation and animal welfare and through emergency response.
1) IFAW is a driving force behind many conservation efforts within the framework of national legislation and international conventions. In lobbying governments and delegates to the various intergovernmental conservation treaties, IFAW’s advocacy campaigns draw upon well-researched and factual arguments to give voice to the many individual pro-conservation constituents with no access to the international stage. In particular,
- IFAW was instrumental in bringing like-minded Anglophone and Francophone African elephant range states together to create an African bloc for conservation at the recent,14th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to CITES in the Hague, June 3-15, 2007. This resulted in the landmark approval of a nine-year suspension of trade in elephant ivory (including a suspension of any discussions of ivory trade at CITES CoPs).
- Efforts to encourage Latin American and Eastern European International Whaling Commission members to vote in favor of whale conservation at the March 2007 meeting of the IWC were successful.
- Campaigning by IFAW for the adoption by the IWC of a resolution calling on the U.N. Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES) to respect the moratorium on commercial whaling was met with resounding success. This resolution laid the foundation for the success of IFAW’s CITES team a week later in Den Haag, Netherlands where efforts by Japan and Iceland to use CITES to undermine protections for the great whales were thwarted.
2) IFAW collaborates in many ways with international and national enforcement agencies to assist their efforts to fight wildlife crime:
- IFAW partners with Interpol on the agency’s Ecomessage system, a mechanism for exchanging information on wildlife crime. Reporting of wildlife crime to the Ecomessage system has increased five-fold since IFAW first became involved, and Interpol has as a result been successful in the past few years in busting significant wildlife trafficking syndicates.
- As part of IFAW’s implementation and enforcement initiatives, IFAW has been working with national governments to organize and conduct wildlife trade law enforcement training and workshops. These training sessions are attended by enforcement officials from customs, police and other relevant authorities and the Environmental Ministries. The training is aimed at educating officials about their rights and obligations, and enhancing their capability to strictly control wildlife trade in their country. Recently, IFAW held trainings in Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Syria, Yemen, China, Libya and India (conducted by IFAW’s partner WTI), countries at crucial crossroads connecting African supply countries with Europe and the Far East.
- IFAW is active in supporting the science of tracking illegal wildlife crime through a number of campaign efforts. DNA analysis is being used in Japan and Korea to identify whale species being traded for meat. IFAW also supported the pilot project by Sam Wasser at the University of Washington, US, in developing an innovative new method for analyzing elephant ivory specimens which allows the tracking elephant ivory "hot spots" and key smuggling routes. As a result, enforcement agencies are now able to focus their limited enforcement capacities in target areas.
- The IFAW China office, through the Asian Elephant Protection (AEP) Project, is leading significant efforts on behalf of elephant conservation, such as anti-poaching patrols, community education, elephant population monitoring, individual elephant identification, and behavior studies.
- The poaching problem plaguing the Zakouma National Park region of the Central African nation of Chad is being addressed by IFAW with a grant to support the training of officers, purchase of equipment, horses and materials as well as animal feed and healthcare.
- IFAW is funding the field investigations into Sumatran elephant ivory trade and also other wildlife trade. This involves the collection of comprehensive data, as well as the uncovering and obtaining of evidence such as photos or video of actual wildlife trafficking in Sumatra. The purpose is for this data and evidence to be used to put pressure on the government and the law enforcement agencies to tighten control.
3. Public awareness has the potential in and of itself to be the agent of change. IFAW’s educational campaigns have the multiple goal of raising awareness on issues of wildlife trade, influencing politicians, and changing social behavior, such as encouraging consumers to make informed decisions with the products they buy.
- Consumers of wildlife are at the nexus of wildlife trade, and expanding economies and increased purchasing power worldwide have resulted in increased demand for wildlife products. By launching its "Think Twice!" campaign, IFAW's goal is to educate consumers as to the impact that their animal-based purchases have on vulnerable wild animal populations. "Think Twice!" also offers solutions that redirect tourist dollars to a local souvenir economy better representative of local cultures and customs.
- A series of IFAW investigations into the illegal trade of wildlife on the Internet, particularly on Ebay, garnered an enormous amount of press coverage. As a result of this and IFAW’s coordinated lobbying efforts, Ebay announced its new policy to ban cross-border trade in elephant ivory, saying that “it was the right thing to do.”
- Seeking to combat the promotion of parts and derivatives taken from endangered species for use in alternative remedies, IFAW works together with organizations such as the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine and the World Society for Traditional Chinese Medicine to educate consumers of the effective, plant-based alternative ingredients to those derived from endangered species. Traditional medicines containing poached animal parts, including tiger bone, bear gallbladder, musk deer, Saiga antelope and rhinoceros horn, continue to be marketed to consumers and practitioners worldwide by manufacturers not sanctioned by either local governments or legitimate practitioners of traditional medicine.
- IFAW leadership of the Whales Need US coalition, an unprecedented coalition of U.S. animal welfare and environmental groups, was key in galvanizing U.S. leadership in preventing a return to commercial whaling via public relations and political efforts. In addition to generating visible public messaging and support for a strengthened U.S. position, the group successfully organized a letter from the House of Representatives to the U.S. IWC delegation demanding U.S. leadership and a strong position with respect to whale conservation.
- IFAW’s launch of an international campaign against Iceland’s return to commercial whaling resulted in significant Icelandic domestic debate on the issue. Signals are that the embers of commercial whaling are dying in Iceland. To date, the meat has not been traded internationally with Japan, the only available trading partner, and there are no plans re-issue the commercial quota.
4. Recognizing that wildlife crime often goes hand-in-hand with recovery of live trafficked animals, IFAW’s emergency response team remains prepared and on constant high alert for situations where rehabilitation and/or re-wilding are appropriate.
- After four gorillas were illegally exported from Nigeria, via South Africa, to the Taiping Zoo in Malaysia in January 2002, IFAW has been working to facilitate the transfer of the “Taiping 4” gorillas to the Limbe Wildlife Centre sanctuary in Cameroon.
- IFAW-supported rehab centers provide critical and life-saving care to recovered animals from attempted smuggling operations and to infant wildlife orphaned by poaching. Recently (beginning of 2007), four tiger cubs were rescued by IFAW and the Federal Governmental Administration Special Inspection “Tiger” on Primorye Territory in Russia’s Far East. In October 2006, five rare and endangered Gyrfalcons – prized as the best possible bird for falconry since the Middle Ages - were confiscated in Moscow. Four of the birds were sent by Russia’s environmental watchdog to IFAW’s wildlife rehabilitation center in Moscow, where they were fully rehabilitated and released to the wild on the Kamchatka peninsula.
To learn how you can help, please visit www.ifaw.org.