Tackling illicit trafficking in wildlife A/RES/73/343 4. Urges Member States to take decisive steps at the national level to prevent, combat and eradicate the illegal trade in wildlife, on the supply, transit and demand sides, including by strengthening their legislation and regulations necessary for the prevention, investigation, prosecution and appropriate punishment of such illegal trade, as well as by strengthening enforcement and criminal justice responses, and to increase the exchange of information and knowledge among national authorities as well as among Member States and international crime authorities, in accordance with national legislation and international law, acknowledging that the International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime can provide valuable technical assistance in this regard, including through supporting Member States in the implementation of the Wildlife and Forest Crime Analytic Toolkit, which is aimed at strengthening, where appropriate, the capacity of relevant law enforcement authoritie s and judiciaries in investigating, prosecuting and adjudicating wildlife -related offences; 5. Calls upon Member States to make illicit trafficking in protected species of wild fauna and flora a serious crime, in accordance with their national legislatio n and as defined in article 2 (b) and article 3, paragraph 1 (b), of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, 7 in order to ensure that, where the offence is transnational in nature and involves an organized criminal group, effective international cooperation can be afforded under the Convention to prevent and combat transnational organized crime; 6. Encourages Member States to further utilize article II, paragraph 3, of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora by listing in its appendix III protected species in their jurisdiction that may become threatened as a result of international trade, and urges Member States to provide assistance in controlling the trade in those species protected under the Convention, including those listed in appendix III; 7. Also encourages Member States to take appropriate measures to enforce the provisions of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, including measures to penalize trade in, or possession of, such illegally traded specimens, or both; 8. Calls upon Member States to review and amend national legislation, as necessary and appropriate, so that offences connected to the illegal trade in wildlife are treated as predicate offences, as defined in the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, for the purposes of domestic money -laundering offences and are actionable under domestic proceeds of crime legislation, and so that assets linked to illegal trade in wildlife and wildlife products can be seized, confiscated and disposed of; 9. Encourages Member States to make use, to the greatest extent possible, of legal instruments available at the national level to tackle illicit trafficking in wildlife, including through legislation related to money-laundering, corruption, fraud, racketeering and financial crime; 10. Calls upon Member States to integrate, as appropriate, the investigation of financial crimes linked to wildlife trafficking into wildlife crime investigations and increase the use of financial investigation techniques and public -private collaboration to identify criminals and their networks; 11. Encourages Member States to harmonize their judicial, legal and administrative regulations to support the exchange of evidence regarding and criminal prosecution of illicit trafficking in wildlife, as well as to establish n ational-level inter-agency wildlife crime task forces and facilitate the exchange of evidence between the different government agencies to the extent consistent with national legislation; 19-15932 5/8