Journalists’ role to combat illegal wildlife trade stressed

Effective role of the journalists has become crucial to protect and conserve the country’s wildlife through combating its illegal trade.

Professional journalists can play a vital role to create public awareness about the importance of wildlife through their in-depth reporting and video documentary.

Wildlife experts came up with the observation while addressing a daylong training workshop for journalists on combating illegal wildlife trade held at Parjatan Motel conference hall in Rajshahi city on Sunday.

Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Department of Forest jointly organized the workshop under the programme of scaling up enforcement capacity and cooperation to combat wildlife trafficking networks in South Asia.

Senior District and Session Judge Meer Shafiqul Alam addressed the workshop as chief guest, while Regional Forest Conservator Mollah Rejaul Karim was in the chair.

WCS Country Representative Dr Jahangir Alam, Wildlife Protection Director Jahir Uddin Akan, Legal Adviser Dr Lasker Maksudur Rahman, Senior Adviser Tariqul Islam and WCS Programme Coordinator Samiul Mohsenin conducted the training sessions as resource persons.

In his remarks, the chief guest said the data related to the illegal wildlife trade should be depicted in mass- media properly to generate public awareness and journalists’ role is very important in this regard.

He also called for proper conservation of wildlife for maintaining environmental balance stressing the need for more public awareness about the importance of wildlife. Existence of wildlife is very important for protecting biodiversity, he added.