Resolving Uncertainties in the Legality of Wildlife Trade to Support Better Outcomes for Wildlife and People

Author

Trisha Gupta | DPhil Student

I’ve been fascinated by the ocean and its vast mysteries from a very young age. Although I grew up in an Indian city that’s far away from the coast, I always looked for any excuses to be by the sea and explore its secrets. Combining this with an inclination for science and a passion for nature and wildlife, I decided to pursue a career in marine biology.

Soon after my masters, an internship on fisheries in the west coast of India exposed me to the real world of conservation. I realised that it’s not just about saving marine organisms but also about the lives of coastal communities interacting with and dependent upon the ocean. My interests then expanded to understanding some of these multidimensional problems and their solutions. While it can be challenging work, I do get to spend a lot of time in some beautiful areas of India’s coastline!

Author

Michelle Anagnostou | Banting Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Growing up in Canada, I have always felt deeply connected to nature. From a young age, I found joy in camping under starry skies, canoeing across lakes, and hiking along trails that meander through dense forests. At the age of 17, I embarked on my first academic research assistantship at a remote wildlife research station, an experience that sparked my passion for scientific exploration. Since then, my research interests have evolved and become increasingly focused relating to my growing expertise, illegal and unsustainable wildlife exploitation. Through graduate and postgraduate research projects, I have collaborated with law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and conducted fieldwork on illegal wildlife trade in Uganda, South Africa, Hong Kong, and Canada. I also have conservation fieldwork experience in Costa Rica and Indonesia.

I have found that despite the myriad of consequences, there has been notably limited research dedicated to exploring illegal wildlife trade as a form of organized crime. This knowledge gap has led to inappropriately placed blame and the criminalization of historically marginalised rural communities who hunt wildlife, while more powerful intermediaries continue to profit and go unpunished. It also impedes the development of comprehensive strategies to dismantle the criminal syndicates involved, address the systemic socio-economic drivers, and mitigate its far-reaching impacts. I am excited about conducting interdisciplinary research that supports efforts to more appropriately prioritise illegal wildlife trade, and more effectively combat the innovative and adaptive strategies of wildlife traffickers. In addition to my postdoctoral fellowship research, I am a Research Consultant and Project Lead with WWF-Hong Kong on the development of an AI solution to screen bookings and shipping documentation for mis-declared or undeclared wildlife products in maritime supply chains.

Author

Dan Challender | Senior Research Fellow

I am an interdisciplinary conservation scientist interested in wildlife trade and use, its sustainability, governance, and economics, including human behaviour, and pangolins and their conservation.

Following my Ph.D. at the University of Kent, I worked for the IUCN Secretariat where I led the organisation’s contribution to CITES and broader illegal wildlife trade work, prior to joining the University of Oxford. In 2012, I re-formed the IUCN SSC Pangolin Specialist Group and served as Chair of the group until early 2021. I now serve as CITES focal point for this group. I am also a member of the IUCN CEESP/SSC Sustainable Use and Livelihoods Specialist Group (SULi).

I was the lead editor of Pangolins: Science, Society and Conservation, the first major volume on pangolins and their conservation, published by Academic Press in 2020.

Author

E.J. Milner-Gulland | Group leader | Tasso Leventis Professor of Biodiversity. Department of Biology, University of Oxford.

Director, Interdisciplinary Centre for Conservation Science (ICCS).
E.J. Milner-Gulland is Tasso Leventis Professor of Biodiversity at the University of Oxford. Previously she was Professor of Conservation Science at Imperial College London, and she has also held lectureships in Resource Economics and Mathematical Ecology. Her PhD, at Imperial College London, was on the wildlife trade, with a focus on ivory, rhino horn and saiga antelopes. Her research group, the Interdisciplinary Centre for Conservation Science, undertakes a wide range of research, outreach and engagement projects, on five continents and in both marine and terrestrial settings. These include developing and applying methods for understanding, predicting, and influencing human behaviour in the context of local resource use in developing countries, and working with businesses to improve their environmental and social sustainability. Her team also works on controlling the illegal trade in wildlife and on designing, monitoring and evaluating conservation interventions in order to improve their effectiveness. She aims to ensure that all the research in her group is addressing issues identified by practitioners, and is carried out collaboratively with end-users, and builds the capacity of young conservationists, particularly in developing countries. She is the founder and chair of the Saiga Conservation Alliance and has launched a number of initiatives which aim to change the real-world conversation around conservation, including the Conservation Hierarchy approach to meeting a global vision of restoring nature and the Conservation Optimism movement. She is the Chair of the UK Government's Darwin Expert Committee and a Trustee of WWF-UK

Finally, I am passionate about the conservation ecology of the saiga antelope in Central Asia, and co-founded the Saiga Conservation Alliance in 2006.