Updates, statements and announcements from the task force.
At Entebbe International Airport, a quiet, four-legged member of the enforcement team is proving hard to fool, detection dogs trained to find ivory, scales and live animals hidden in luggage and cargo.
Not all wildlife crime deals in scales and tusks. A growing trade moves living creatures, parrots, monkeys, snakes, out of Uganda’s wild, and the Task Force is intercepting it.
Away from the seizures and the courtrooms, the Task Force’s real engine is a table, where focal persons from the member agencies meet, share intelligence and plan the next joint operation.
From a 1.3-tonne seizure in Najjanakumbi to worked ivory intercepted at Entebbe, coordinated multi-agency action is squeezing the ivory supply chain through Uganda.
Alarmed by the degradation of one of Uganda’s most important biodiversity and carbon reservoirs, the Task Force has made restoring Bugoma Central Forest Reserve a national priority.
A single 2021 operation recovered 740 kg of pangolin scales. Behind that number lies a quiet catastrophe, and a determined multi-agency effort to stop it.
From Kasese to Karamoja and the border posts of Malaba, Busia, Rwakhaka and Mpondwe, how the Task Force is building a human early-warning system against wildlife crime.
Forest crime has moved to the centre of the Task Force’s mandate, targeting illegal logging, land encroachment and the illicit timber trade that feeds on Uganda’s reserves.
At the Bunyoro engagement, UNODC’s Annet Okot and the Resident Judge of Masindi stressed teamwork and justice, a reminder that the Judiciary and prosecutors are central to deterring forest and wildlife crime.
