A team from Aaranyak’s Legal and Advocacy Division (LAD) recently participated in the Indian Wildlife Ecology Conference (IWEC) 2026, held at Ashoka University in Sonipat, Haryana. The team co-organised a Special Interest Group (SIG) with the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) on the theme ‘Establishing a Community of Practice to Address Illegal Wildlife Hunting and Trade through Integrated Community Surveillance and Evidence-Based Protection.’
The two-day SIG brought together researchers, conservation practitioners, law enforcement professionals, policymakers, and community representatives to deliberate on innovative and collaborative approaches for tackling illegal wildlife hunting and trade (IWHT). The SIG was jointly inaugurated by Dr. Jimmy Borah, Deputy Director, LAD, Aaranyak, and Jose Louies, CEO, WTI, who introduced the objectives of the session and provided the context for discussions.
They highlighted the urgent need to bridge ecological research, community participation, governance, and evidence-based protection to strengthen wildlife crime prevention and establish a long-term community of practice dedicated to addressing illegal wildlife trade. Various presentations were made during the SIG, including sessions by Ms. Binita Baruwati, Ms. Ivy Farheen Hussain, Mizing Boro, and Bijeet Baro from Aaranyak’s LAD, covering topics such as open-source information on wildlife crime data collection, pet shops as trafficking nodes, integrated surveillance approaches, and evidence-based wildlife crime prevention.
The SIG also featured presentations by experts from the Wildlife Trust of India and partner organisations, covering diverse themes including community participation in pangolin conservation, trade in threatened plants, cyber-assisted wildlife crime, criminological approaches to understanding illegal wildlife trade, and species-specific trafficking dynamics. The interactive discussions generated valuable recommendations for strengthening community-based surveillance systems, improving the use of technology and intelligence in wildlife crime prevention, and fostering stronger collaboration among researchers, practitioners, government agencies, and local communities.
A key outcome of the session was the collective commitment to establish a cross-sectoral Community of Practice that will facilitate continued knowledge exchange, collaborative research, policy dialogue, and the development of innovative approaches for combating illegal wildlife hunting and trade. Aaranyak acknowledges the generous support of the Resilience Fund – Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) and the Weeden Foundation, enabling its team to participate in IWEC 2026.
