Nigeria Hosts Legal Standards Workshop.

In a few days from now, Abuja, the beautiful capital of Nigeria will host the first ever Legal Standards Workshop of the Barcode of Wild Life Project. The One-Day Workshop will hold on Wednesday 28th August, 2013 at the Newton Park Hotel, Abuja.

 The workshop is being organised by the National Biotechnology Development Agency,(NABDA) in collaboration with the  Consortium for the Barcode of Life(CBOL), an international initiative  of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C,USA. It is part of the first phase of the Barcode of Wildlife Project (BoWP) Nigeria. It aims to demonstrate the value of DNA barcoding in the investigation and prosecution of wildlife crimes.DNA barcoding is a technique that uses a short DNA sequence from the genome of an organism, living or dead, as a molecular way of identifying the species it belongs to.

 David Schindel, Executive Secretary, CBOL would be the main resource person for the workshop. However, Local resource persons would also be brought in to give insights on local history and existing or related legislation on wildlife protection and conservation in Nigeria.

Top on the Agenda are an overview of the DNA barcoding and Barcode of Wildlife Project ;l enumeration and discussion of project components involved in legal standards for admissibility; presentation of the BARCODE data standard and proposed reference sequence database; discussion of Nigerian legal standards related to reference sequence database and discussion of the action issues; Handling and processing of evidence; validation, accreditation and certification of laboratory staff  and expert witnesses, agreement on action items and other issues to be addressed as well as a closing dinner..

Participants at the workshop would include researchers, scientists, as environmental experts, security agents, law makers, lawyers ,policy makers and stakeholders in wildlife issues .