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Wildlife Enforcement Monitoring System (WEMS) is a GIS based model developed to monitor wildlife law enforcement in the Asian region. It was started as a joint initiative by the United Nations University and the Asian Conservation Alliance. It is also supported financially by the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

Transnational organized wildlife crime poses a major challenge to conservation and protection of wild flora and fauna. United Nations, during its multilateral conventions, Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), often come up with challenges on how to deal with illegal wildlife trade as there is no official record of the amount of illegal trade that is actually taking place. UN General Assembly resolution (document A/CONF.203/PM.1) states that, combating the trade in endangered species requires a comprehensive approach that builds on areas of success, remedies deficiencies and weakness in laws and enforcement efforts and goes beyond law enforcement to include educational campaigns and awareness-raising.

Understanding the seriousness of the issue, in October 2004, CITES adopted a resolution (Resolution Conf. 11.3 (Rev.CoP13) ‘Enforcement matters’) at the 13th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties (CoP13) and recommended to the Parties to evaluate and utilize, for enforcement purposes, information from non-governmental sources while maintaining standards of confidentiality.

The project aims to:

• Show a definite pattern of international illegal wildlife trade in the Asian region
• Evaluate international cooperation and law enforcement
• Supply information on wildlife enforcements to authorities
• Gather and organise information from non-governmental sources
• Utilize the GIS based software to disseminate information gathered

Mr. Remi Chandran, Research Associate, WEMS Project.

• Wildlife conservation
• Wildlife management
• CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora)
• Environmental agreements