India, May 22 -- Although some wildlife trade may be legal, it remains immoral; we must accelerate our endeavours to bolster lawful and moral protection to tackle both legal and illegal wildlife trade

As I looked at the latest third edition of the United Nations Office on Drugs And Crime World Wildlife Crime (UNODC) Report last week, a childhood memory flashed through my mind. It was the vision of a traveling zoo in a fair I had visited near my house in Kolkata. Even at that young and impressionable age, I recall the impact the captive animals made on me. Cooped in cages and containers hardly larger than their own bodies were leopards, lions, porcupines, jackals, monkeys, parrots, pelicans and several snakes. Vivid in my mind remains the...