Its purpose is to build capacity worldwide by providing free and easy access to wildlife-related legislation and case-law, employing modern technology.
The Wildlex database mainly focuses on the criminal aspects of statutory and judicial responses to wrongful behaviors affecting wildlife. It includes domestic laws, national court decisions from both higher and lower courts, a basic analysis of those court decisions and relevant literature on wildlife crime at the national or global level. Wildlex also provides links to other relevant websites for users to access further information. Finally, it includes training materials on wildlife and criminal law, created by the IUCN, free to download, use, modify and share. The database initially focused on analysis conducted in Tanzania, and will be progressively populated with data and information from more countries.
The development of this database is supported by the German Polifund project to help combat poaching and illegal wildlife trade in Africa and Asia, measure implemented by GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit), on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the German Federal Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB).
