CHIANG MAI, 2 September 2015 – The Royal Thai Police and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment have jointly launched training for anti-ivory trade officials on duty in the northern border areas.
The training course, conducted in Chiang Mai Province, is aimed at educating officers from both units on new anti-ivory trade and wildlife protection laws, which have already listed African elephants as protected species and empowered authorities to search suspicious goods without search warrants.
It is expected that the program would equip the officials in border areas with better legal knowledge of their authority, thus boosting the efficiency of their operation against ivory trade.
Police and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment have focused their attention on the suppression of illegal ivory trade in border provinces, particularly Chiang Mai, where the killing of wild elephants for their ivories and the smuggling of ivories are quite rampant.
