13-May-2018: 4th meeting of SAWEN held in Kolkata, India.

The South Asia Wildlife En­force­ment Net­work (SAWEN), an in­ter-gov­ern­men­tal wildlife law en­force­ment agency, in its first ever meet­ing in In­dia, adopted many res­o­lu­tions to curb wildlife crime in the re­gion.

At the two-day con­fer­ence held here from May 8 - 10, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of seven out of eight countries par­tic­i­pated, and the mem­bers agreed on hav­ing an op­er­a­tional frame­work for strength­en­ing the re­gional body to com­bat wildlife crime.

Un­der­lin­ing the fact that wildlife crime is one of the ma­jor con­ser­va­tion chal­lenges for the world, Man Ba­hadur Khadka, chief en­force­ment co­or­di­na­tor of SAWEN, said that dur­ing the meet six pro­pos­als, in­clud­ing track­ing of wildlife smug­gling route, re­view of ex­ist­ing laws and a struc­ture for the or­gan­i­sa­tion were tabled. Mem­bers have given their views at the meet­ing, the SAWEN sec­re­tariat will look into their sug­ges­tions and af­ter tak­ing them into con­sid­er­a­tion, make these doc­u­ments pub­lic.

Mem­bers of all par­tic­i­pant coun­tries — In­dia, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan —ex­cept Pak­istan par­tic­i­pated in the meet­ing.

SAWEN was launched in Bhutan in 2011 and in 2016 the Union Cab­i­net gave per­mis­sion to adopt the statute of SAWEN.

The most smug­gled wildlife items in the re­gion are leop­ard skin and bones, pan­golin scales, rhino horns and en­dan­gered birds.

In­dia is a source coun­try for smug­gling of species of both plants and an­i­mals. Most of these wildlife prod­ucts are smug­gled to South East Asia and China and the route goes through the coun­try along with neigh­bour­ing coun­tries.