Wildlife trade follows three broad typologies in Indonesia:

• The truly illegal: This includes trade is such species as tiger, rhino, elephant, pangolin and others. All aspects of the trade chain, from source to market, are covert, and unambiguously illegal.
• The truly legal: This includes trade in non-protected species, sourced legally from non-protected areas, following all relevant regulations and paying all due taxes. Despite the legality, this type of trade is poorly regulated and often unsustainable.
• The illegal traded as legal: This includes non-protected species sourced illegally from protected areas, over-quota trading, wild-caught products traded as ‘captive-bred’, deliberately misidentified export consignments, and many other forms of deception.

The problems that underlie the threat of illegal and unsustainable trade are complex. They include: exploitative national policy; weak information systems; isolated regional enforcement agencies, delivering ineffective law enforcement; low technical capacities and motivation; mal-governance and corruption.

WCS operates an active Wildlife Crime Unit in Indonesia. This unit works alongside the Indonesian Forestry Department, Police, and other key stakeholders, focusing on:

• Improved enforcement of wildlife trade: WCS works closely with enforcement agencies in key trade locations to strengthen enforcement and reduce the supply of wildlife from illegal or unsustainable sources. We facilitate collaboration and information sharing and clarify roles, plus provide a comprehensive package of capacity building initiatives, targeting senior staff and judiciary, and focusing on developing an improved tactical response. We also seek to improve the feedback systems by which regional agencies report back to central government counterparts, thus providing an factual basis for directing policy reform. We also actively conduct overt and covert investigation of wildlife trade, providing all information to enforcement authorities.
• Inter-agency collaboration & information sharing: We seek to facilitate closer working relationships between national and international wildlife trade enforcement and regulating agencies, based on existing or new institutions and forums, and focusing on free information exchange, transparency, and cross-border enforcement issues.
• Policy review and change: WCS seeks the revision and enactment of national policies and laws that support effective law enforcement and that ensure wildlife is only legally traded from demonstrably sustainably exploited or captive-bred resources, with full identity preservation.

WCS evaluates its impact against the rate of loss of biodiversity within Indonesia, using key indicator species representative of the main typologies of trade to monitor trade volume and economics, and wild population status. Our activities currently focus on key trade ports in Sumatra, Java and eastern Indonesia. Recent successes have included the largest seizure of pangolins ever in Indonesia.

• Expand our coverage: We are looking to expand our geographic coverage within Indonesia, particularly to the east in Maluku and Papua provinces, and to coordinate more multi-region enforcement action.
• Economic assessment: We plan to undertake an detailed economic valuation of legal and illegal wildlife trade in Indonesia, including the externalities and opportunity costs and the economics of enforcement. We intend this review to be used as a guide in resource allocation and as a basis for promoting fiscal reform.
• Cost-recovery mechanisms: We are seeking to pilot institutional cost-recovery mechanisms from illegal trade seizures through money laundering legislation, and cost-recovery mechanisms from legal trade through revised fiscal regulations.