Wildlife Crime

The Vale of Glamorgan Council is a member of the Partnership for Action Against Wildlife Crime (PAW).

PAW brings together lots of organisations with an interest in wildlife law enforcement - the Partnership includes central Government departments, the Police, HM Revenue and Customs, Local Authorities and voluntary bodies.

Members of PAW are committed to reducing wildlife crime by raising awareness and promoting enforcement.

Vale of Glamorgan Council has a responsibility to try to prevent wildlife crime from happening. The ecology team helps the Council achieve this through offering advice to its officers and by making recommendations on protected species and sites for Development Control.

Vale of Glamorgan Council, through the Local Biodiversity Action Plan Partnership helps conserve threatened and protected species through conservation and works to manage and enhance sites that are important for wildlife.

PAW Website 

Wildlife crime can be divided into three broad types:

• The illegal trade in endangered animals
  The UK Government is a Party to CITES (the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species). This regulates the trade of over 33,000 species: to protect those that are threatened by extinction or might become so in the near future.
• Crimes involving native species

  In the UK, many species and habitats are protected from harm or disturbance or trade by a range of legislation.

   

  This includes disturbing/harming protected species such as bats or great crested newts or disturbing nesting birds or collecting eggs.

• Cruelty to and persecution of wildlife species
  There is specific UK legislation to protect particular species such as badger or deer, but there is also legislation that makes it an offence to cause wild mammals unnecessary suffering by certain acts.