The Director-General of ANAC, Mateus Mutemba, and the CITES Secretary General, Ivonne Higuero, signed on 28th August the European Union-funded MIKE Project, during the COP 18, in Geneve. This is the second phase of the implementation of the MIKE Program in Mozambique and especially in the Niassa National Reserve.
Credits: #ANAC
The Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE) Programme has been implemented since 2001 by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) Secretariat together with African and Asian elephant range States and with the support of the European Commission (EC). The programme aims to generate reliable and impartial data on the status and trends in illegal killing of African and Asian elephant populations, as a basis for international and range State decision-making and action concerning elephant conservation.
In 2018, the CITES MIKE Programme secured additional funding from the EC to expand support for MIKE law enforcement focal sites in Eastern and Southern Africa, with a special focus on transboundary protected areas, as part of the Cross-Regional Wildlife Conservation in Eastern & Southern Africa and the Indian Ocean (CRWC) Programme. The project is being implemented in collaboration with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS), under the framework of the EC’s Regional Indicative Programme for Eastern Africa, Southern Africa and the Indian Ocean, 2014-2020.
The overall objective of the CRWC Programme is to stop the illegal killing and trafficking of protected wildlife species in southern and eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean through improved management of shared ecosystems, including strengthening law enforcement capacity and cross-border collaboration in combating wildlife crime. This will be achieved through the implementation of three complementary specific objectives, of which the CITES MIKE Programme is responsible for the delivery of the first: Capacity and collaboration for combating wildlife crime impacting CITES-listed species in key transboundary conservation landscapes strengthened.
This Specific Objective will be delivered through two main result areas:
Result 1.1: Wildlife law enforcement capacity strengthened in selected MIKE focal sites located within key transboundary landscapes
Result 1.2: Mechanisms and capacity for collaboration in wildlife crime prevention within key transboundary landscapes strengthened
This sub-project document details the support for strengthening wildlife law enforcement in the Niassa National Reserve (NNR) MIKE site in northern Mozambique that will be provided through the CRWC project to deliver on both these result areas, in cooperation with the Administração Nacional Das Áreas De Conservação (ANAC – the national wildlife management agency) and with the implementation support of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS – the implementing partner). The sub-project builds on previous law enforcement support provided to the NNR by the MIKE Programme under the previous MIKES Project, which was also financed by the European Union.