JOHANNESBURG: Customs and excise officials have taken their task of protecting the country’s borders against wildlife smugglers to heart.
But, it seems, in their determined effort to put a stop to organised crime syndicates’ rampant exploitation of border posts – and in particular OR Tambo International Airport – they might have gone a little bit overboard.
Thousands of international wildlife experts have been flying to Johannesburg to attend the 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
And eagle-eyed officials have, for the past five days, ensured that hard copies of the UN World Wildlife Crime 2016 report remained “detained” by them at OR Tambo.
Organisers of the International Consortium for Combating Wildlife Crime revealed this week – to much amusement – that the report would not be available as “there seems to be a hitch in getting copies of the report released by customs officials”.
Jorge Rios, chief of the U N Office on Drugs and Crime, a programme to combat wildlife and forest crime, said they were working hard to get it released. “It’s a mystery. There are problems with massive border exploitation by criminal syndicates operating in South Africa, and animals and their body parts being smuggled out, but for some reason customs officials are clamping down on our ‘highly dangerous’ report,” sources said.
