The most immediate critical threat to African elephants, rhinos, apes, and other endangered wildlife is large-scale poaching and the organized criminal networks that traffic in these animals. Although national laws and international treaties protect these species throughout their range, two key factors prevent them from making a difference on the ground. The first is the weak application of relevant laws to arrest wildlife criminals, and the second is the failure of criminal courts to hand down sentences which not only take significant wildlife traffickers out of action, but also act as a deterrent. Widespread corruption feeds this process.[teaserbreak]
The EAGLE (Eco Activists for Governance and Law Enforcement) Network is a membership of projects committed to turning the table on this state of affairs. For more than a decade, EAGLE has developed its unique initiative through collaboration with national governments and civil society with a program of investigations, arrests, prosecutions, and publicity.
The African countries covered by this initiative are key to combating illegal wildlife trade; they either support significant populations of species threatened by trade or play a central role in trafficking these species beyond their countries’ borders.
EAGLE first succeeded in Cameroon through the Last Great Ape Organization (LAGA) project, where, from a decade of no wildlife prosecutions, one major trafficker has been prosecuted every week since 2003. Since then, this project has been replicated in eight other countries, linked together under the EAGLE Network:
- Republic of Congo (2008)
- Central African Republic (2009)
- Gabon (2010)
- Guinea Conakry (2012)
- Togo (2013)
- Senegal (2014)
- Benin (2014)
- Uganda (2015)
