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Animals
Special Issues
Wildlife Trade and Crime
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Wildlife Trade and Crime

A special issue of Animals (ISSN 2076-2615). This special issue belongs to the section "Wildlife".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 1 December 2024 | Viewed by 2441

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Harry Wels

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
1. African Studies Center Leiden, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands
2. Faculty of Social Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Interests: nature conservation in south and southern Africa; multispecies organizational ethnography; women and gender studies

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Wildlife trade is a global enterprise, with medicinal plants, animals, and products made from them sold around the globe, legally and illegally. It is also a leading cause of the planet’s accelerating biodiversity crisis and subsequent environmental collapse. A number of national and international governments and (International) Non-Governmental Organisations ((I)NGOs) have prioritised addressing international wildlife trafficking. Some organisations are on the ground involved in exporting and importing to countries, stopping poachers and buyers in their tracks, whereas others are developing sophisticated technologies to regulate the specific origins of suspect wildlife products and identifying poaching hot spots. Many are focused on educating the global population about the need to halt the consumption of endangered wildlife.

This Special Issue will focus on empirical research on the nature of the illegal wildlife trade as well as new solutions to track, prove, and prevent wildlife crime. Overall, this work will help to understand how the illegal trade operates and will provide actionable solutions to mitigate threats to protected wildlife.

Dr. Harry Wels
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Animals is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • wildlife trade and crime
  • trafficking, syndicates
  • social movements and wildlife conservation

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

30 pages, 1271 KiB  
Article
Persistent Illegal Hunting of Wildlife in an African Landscape: Insights from a Study in the Luangwa Valley, Zambia
by Paul Zyambo, Jacob Mwitwa, Felix Kanungwe Kalaba and Eustarckio Kazonga
Animals 2024, 14(16), 2401; https://doi.org/10.3390/ani14162401 - 19 Aug 2024
Viewed by 1039
Abstract
Decades of illegal hunting (poaching) have adversely affected wildlife populations and thereby limited sustainable wildlife conservation in the Luangwa Valley, Zambia. Despite intervention efforts to address the problem, the illegal hunting of wildlife has persisted. Therefore, this study was conducted to understand the [...] Read more.
Decades of illegal hunting (poaching) have adversely affected wildlife populations and thereby limited sustainable wildlife conservation in the Luangwa Valley, Zambia. Despite intervention efforts to address the problem, the illegal hunting of wildlife has persisted. Therefore, this study was conducted to understand the persistence of illegal hunting by investigating the drivers of poaching and intervention measures using a mixed methods approach. Stratified random sampling was used to collect data from 346 respondents through structured questionnaires. Purposive sampling was used to collect data through nine focus group discussions and three in-depth interviews with experts. The study revealed that persistent illegal hunting was mainly driven by people’s critical need for survival and sustaining their livelihoods and not by inadequate law enforcement as presumed by resource managers. Although law enforcement was the most prevalent intervention measure, it did not deter local illegal hunters because their main motivations for poaching were not effectively addressed. The key implication of these findings is that where the illegal harvesting of natural resources in protected areas by local resource users is driven by people’s critical need for survival and a livelihood, which is ineffectively addressed, illegal harvesting may persist even with increased law enforcement. This study provides empirical evidence, novel conceptual knowledge and an understanding of how prevalent drivers of poaching and other factors may have influenced persistent illegal hunting in the Luangwa Valley. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Wildlife Trade and Crime)
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10 pages, 4454 KiB  
Article
Mitochondrial Control Region Database of Hungarian Fallow Deer (Dama dama) Populations for Forensic Use
by Orsolya K. Zorkóczy, Zsombor Wagenhoffer, Pál Lehotzky, Zsolt Pádár and Petra Zenke
Animals 2024, 14(13), 1911; https://doi.org/10.3390/ani14131911 - 28 Jun 2024
Viewed by 715
Abstract
The evidential value of an mtDNA match between biological remains and their potential donor is determined by the random match probability of the haplotype. This probability is based on the haplotype’s population frequency estimate. Consequently, implementing a population study representative of the population [...] Read more.
The evidential value of an mtDNA match between biological remains and their potential donor is determined by the random match probability of the haplotype. This probability is based on the haplotype’s population frequency estimate. Consequently, implementing a population study representative of the population relevant to a forensic case is vital to correctly evaluating the evidence. The emerging number of poaching cases and the limited availability of such data emphasizes the need for an improved fallow deer mtDNA population databank for forensic purposes, including targeting the entire mitochondrial control region. By sequencing a 945-base-pair-long segment of the mitochondrial control region in 138 animals from five populations in Hungary, we found four different haplotypes, including one which had not yet been described. Our results, supplemented with data already available from previous research, do not support the possibility of determining the population of origin, although some patterns of geographical separation can be distinguished. Estimates of molecular diversity indicate similarly low mtDNA diversity (Hd = 0.565 and π = 0.002) compared to data from other countries. The calculated random match probability of 0.547 shows a high probability of coincidence and, therefore, a limited capacity for exclusion. Our results indicate that despite the overall low genetic diversity of mtDNA within the Hungarian fallow deer samples, a pattern of differentiation among the regions is present, which can have relevance from a forensic point of view. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Wildlife Trade and Crime)
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