scholarly journals Understanding the social impacts of enforcement activities on illegal wildlife trade in China

AMBIO ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sifan Hu ◽  
Yu Cheng ◽  
Rong Pan ◽  
Fasheng Zou ◽  
Tien Ming Lee

AbstractIllegal wildlife trade enforcement is a cornerstone conservation strategy worldwide, yet we have a limited understanding on its social impacts. Using Chinese online wildlife seizure news (2003–2018), we evaluated the interactions among enforcement operations, news frequency, and social engagement (i.e., whistle-blowing) frequency. Our results showed that intensive enforcement operations, which commenced after 2012, have social impacts by increasing the frequency of all seizure news significantly by 28% [95% Confidence Interval (CI): 5%, 51%] and those via whistle-blowing by 24% [95% CI: 2%, 45%], when compared to counterfactual models where possible confounding factors were accounted for. Furthermore, we revealed the potential interaction between enforcement seizure news with and without social engagement, and the consequential social feedback process. Of the species identified from ‘whistle-blowing’ news, up to 28% are considered as high conservation priorities. Overall, we expanded our understanding of the enforcement impacts to social dimensions, which could contribute to improving the cost-effectiveness of such conservation efforts.

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (16) ◽  
pp. 17229-17234
Author(s):  
Yadav Ghimirey ◽  
Raju Acharya

We document trade of the Clouded Leopard Neofelis nebulosa in Nepal based on pelt seizure reports published in wildlife trade reports and in newspapers.  Just 27 cases in three decades seem little to suggest targeted illegal trade of the species, the seizure information in recent years indicate that illegal trade of Clouded Leopard body parts is still taking place.  Hence an in-depth assessment is necessary to understand properly the intensity and magnitude of illegal trade on Clouded Leopard in the country.


Author(s):  
Dan Yue ◽  
Zepeng Tong ◽  
Jianchi Tian ◽  
Yang Li ◽  
Linxiu Zhang ◽  
...  

The global illegal wildlife trade directly threatens biodiversity and leads to disease outbreaks and epidemics. In order to avoid the loss of endangered species and ensure public health security, it is necessary to intervene in illegal wildlife trade and promote public awareness of the need for wildlife conservation. Anthropomorphism is a basic and common psychological process in humans that plays a crucial role in determining how a person interacts with other non-human agents. Previous research indicates that anthropomorphizing nature entities through metaphors could increase individual behavioral intention of wildlife conservation. However, relatively little is known about the mechanism by which anthropomorphism influences behavioral intention and whether social context affects the effect of anthropomorphism. This research investigated the impact of negative emotions associated with a pandemic situation on the effectiveness of anthropomorphic strategies for wildlife conservation across two experimental studies. Experiment 1 recruited 245 college students online and asked them to read a combination of texts and pictures as anthropomorphic materials. The results indicated that anthropomorphic materials could increase participants’ empathy and decrease their wildlife product consumption intention. Experiment 2 recruited 140 college students online and they were required to read the same materials as experiment 1 after watching a video related to epidemics. The results showed that the effect of wildlife anthropomorphization vanished if participants’ negative emotion was aroused by the video. The present research provides experimental evidence that anthropomorphic strategies would be useful for boosting public support for wildlife conservation. However, policymakers and conservation organizations must be careful about the negative effects of the pandemic context, as the negative emotions produced by it seems to weaken the effectiveness of anthropomorphic strategies.


Author(s):  
Lucrecia Souviron-Priego ◽  
Jesús Olivero ◽  
Juan Mario Vargas ◽  
John E. Fa

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
E.J. Milner-Gulland ◽  
Laure Cugniere ◽  
Amy Hinsley ◽  
Jacob Phelps ◽  
Michael 't Sas Rolfe ◽  
...  

Tools and expertise to improve the evidence base for national and international Illegal Wildlife Trade policy already exist but are underutilised. Tapping into these resources would produce substantive benefits for wildlife conservation and associated sectors, enabling governments to better meet their obligations under the Sustainable Development Goals and international biodiversity conventions. This can be achieved through enhanced funding support for inter-sectoral research collaborations, engaging researchers in priority setting and programme design, increasing developing country research capacity and engaging researchers and community voices in policy processes. This briefing, addressed to policy makers and practitioners, is part of the 2018 Evidence to Action: Research to Address Illegal Wildlife Trade event programme, organised by five of the UK’s most active IWT research institutions, to support the London 2018 IWT Conference.


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