Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the recommendations of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report entitled Wildlife and Forest Crime Analytic Toolkit Report: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, what steps he plans to take to ensure that there are sufficient resources for statutory agencies to improve their ability to investigate and prosecute offences related to wildlife crime.

We welcome this report and the fact that it recognises the UK’s global leadership in fighting wildlife and forestry crime. We invited the UN to undertake this analysis and we are proud to be the first G7 country to request this assessment.

There is always more we can do to tackle wildlife crime and we will carefully consider all of the UN’s recommendations – including those relating to the resourcing of statutory agencies – to help us build on the positive progress we have already made. While many of the resourcing recommendations fall outside of Defra’s remit, progress has already been made in response to this report, for example with Border Force increasing numbers in their team specialising in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

Since 2016 Defra and the Home Office have jointly contributed approximately £300,000 annually to the National Wildlife Crime Unit, which monitors and gathers intelligence on wildlife crime and aids police forces in their investigations when required.