International Wildlife Crime

Lord Randall of Uxbridge Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Randall (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) and others, including the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley), on securing this very important debate. It is a privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith). If only I had his oratorical skills to get my passion across: the passion is in there, burning, but I just cannot always get it out.

I am delighted to see my right hon. Friend the Minister for Government Policy. That shows just how seriously this Government are taking this important issue, which matters to so many thousands of people in this country.

I am delighted that the Government will host this important conference and I hope that a really good declaration will come out of it—perhaps something along the lines of the Marrakesh declaration, which was a 10-step action plan launched by the African Development Bank in May 2013.

Yesterday, the Government published a document on their commitment to action on the illegal wildlife trade. I echo the sentiments of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North on the funding for the national wildlife crime unit. That is a good step, but in order to achieve some continuity the funding has to have a bit more longevity.

Members have spoken passionately about the ivory trade—it is a real issue—but I want to highlight briefly some lesser known, but equally important, areas of wildlife crime. Vultures in southern Africa are on the brink of extinction because of the use of carbofuran, a poison that poachers use when they have slaughtered an elephant or rhino in order to expressly kill vultures whose presence gives away their crime.

Most birds around the world are threatened by the use of illegal poisons, as well as by shooting, and we should remember that this country also has a problem with wildlife crime against raptors. In particular, I make no apology for reminding the House about the fate of the hen harrier in our own uplands. Last year, the Law Commission recognised that the liability for bird of prey persecution needs to be extended, through a legal concept known as vicarious liability, to landowners who allow their gamekeepers to use illegal techniques. I hope our Government are at least looking carefully at that recommendation. Bird of prey persecution is a serious organised crime and I think that the responsibility for leading the enforcement responses should lie with the National Crime Agency, with the national wildlife crime unit providing intelligence support.

I want to draw the House’s attention to the poaching of saiga antelopes for their horns. Saiga antelopes are unusual and rather enigmatic creatures. For those who do not know what they are, they look like antelopes with huge swollen snouts, and only the males grow horns. After the ban on rhino horn in 1993, saiga horn became a substitute in traditional Chinese medicine, and their numbers in their native central Asian steppes declined alarmingly—down by 95% by 2000. There has since been a slight increase in their numbers, but they need protection as they again face pressure from poaching. We all know about the threat to the tiger population, and that iconic species is pretty near the top of my priorities, but we have to remember the less glamorous but no less important species throughout the world.

I look forward to hearing from the conference not just warm words, but real action worldwide, so that wildlife crime—as we have heard, it is linked to terrorism and organised crime, so it is an important and serious area of crime—can be thwarted and future generations can enjoy sharing the planet with rhinos, elephants, tigers, hen harriers and even my old friends the saiga antelopes.

One of the things I wanted to do when I entered the House was to speak up for wildlife. I have been lucky enough to go round Britain and the world to see such animals, and I want to make sure that other people and future generations can enjoy also them.