Title
Novel Approaches to Understand and Influence Incentives for Illegal Resource use in Protected Areas.
Author(s)
Travers, Henry; Archer, Lucy; Baker, Julia; Milner-Gulland, E. J.; Mwedde, Geoffrey; Plumptre, Andrew; Roe, Dilys; Rwetsiba, Aggrey
Published
2017
Abstract
Despite increasing use of scientific evidence to guide conservation decision-making, the design of conservation interventions still often falls back on implementers’ personal experience and subjective judgement. This is particularly true for interventions aiming to tackle the recent global surge in poaching and illegal wildlife trade, where pervasive narratives often obscure complex realities. Under this scenario, there is a danger that opportunities for more effective solutions may be missed and that the long-term costs to conservation may be higher. Yet there are now a growing number of techniques that enable the social, economic and cultural factors that drive wildlife crime to be better understood. Similarly, the increasing adoption of predictive methods in conservation allows us to test the interventions that might be implemented to combat these drivers prior to their implementation. Drawing on a case study from Murchison Falls and Queen Elizabeth National Parks, Uganda’s two largest protected areas, we will show how such techniques can be combined to enable conservation decision-makers and practitioners to move beyond ‘best practice’ and develop evidence-based strategies that actively address the main drivers of wildlife crime in protected areas.
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PUB26953