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International commercial trade in wildlife, whether legal or illegal, is one of the greatest threats to multiple species of wildlife today. Opinions on how to address it are deeply divided across the conservation community. Approaches fall into two broad categories: making the trade illegal to protect against any form of commercial trade, or allowing some or all of the trade to be legal and seeking to manage it through sustainable trade. The conservation community is often deeply polarized on which is the better option.
Said study author, Elizabeth Bennett, Vice President for Species Conservation for WCS: “If adopted and applied, the approach could help the conservation community move beyond some of the heated controversies that we see at CITES and beyond, by allowing for objective, scientific considerations of likely outcomes from different approaches.”
The paper describes how to construct a model to make decisions on approaches more likely to succeed in conserving a species, given its productivity, management context (e.g. the level of corruption along the trade chain), and types and levels of demand.
The model can be used to assess which trade regime is more likely to succeed in conserving a species given the particular characteristics of the species and the context. In addition, it provides the opportunity to explicitly explore how assumptions about the way in which humans could respond to different trade regimes might affect the outcomes.
Co-author E.J. Milner-Gulland said: “It’s so important that we come together as a conservation community and aim for our goal of sustainable and healthy wildlife populations. This framework could help conservationists to think through the factors affecting sustainability for a particular species, and come to a consensus about how to manage the species better.”
The framework uses a Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) – a type of mathematical model that describes causal relationships between variables and can be used to explore the probabilities of outcomes under different scenarios. The authors discuss how the BBN can be adapted for species with different characteristics, for example those that can be stockpiled or when there are multiple products.
Co-author Fiona Underwood said: “BBNs are transparent and user-friendly tools that allow us to lay bare the underlying structure and relationships between different attributes of the wildlife trade. Our proposed approach can provide a basis for discussion amongst different interested parties because they can contribute to the development of the BBN itself, explore for themselves the consequences of decisions and examine the interplay and relative importance of different drivers of the trade on the sustainability of a species.”
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WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society)
MISSION: WCS saves wildlife and wild places worldwide through science, conservation action, education, and inspiring people to value nature. To achieve our mission, WCS, based at the Bronx Zoo, harnesses the power of its Global Conservation Program in nearly 60 nations and in all the world’s oceans and its five wildlife parks in New York City, visited by 4 million people annually. WCS combines its expertise in the field, zoos, and aquarium to achieve its conservation mission. Visit: newsroom.wcs.org Follow: @WCSNewsroom. For more information: 347-840-1242.
Fiona Underwood carried out this work as an independent statistical researcher/consultant (www.fmunderwood.com). She works collaboratively to create robust data-driven approaches that build the evidence base needed to help address complex problems in natural resources management, wildlife trade, food security and the environment. She now also works at the National Trust, UK.
About the National Trust The National Trust is a conservation charity founded in 1895 by three people: Octavia Hill, Sir Robert Hunter and Hardwicke Rawnsley, who saw the importance of the nation’s heritage and open spaces and wanted to preserve them for everyone to enjoy. Today, across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, we continue to look after places so people and nature can thrive.
The University of Oxford
Oxford University has been placed number one in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for the fifth year running, and at the heart of this success is our ground-breaking research and innovation. Oxford is world-famous for research excellence and home to some of the most talented people from across the globe. Our work helps the lives of millions, solving real-world problems through a huge network of partnerships and collaborations. The breadth and interdisciplinary nature of our research sparks imaginative and inventive insights and solutions.
