Chthonic Wildlife Ramblings

It is somewhat illuminating that when I started investigating tiger poaching about 2 years ago, there were supposed to be 4000 tigers in India. Within 12 months, we were down to 4000 tigers in all of Asia. But note that in a lot of countries, we still don't know how many tigers are left in some coountries (the Sumatran population is pretty much guess-work).

In India, 30 tiger deaths have already been reported this year (note that not all tiger deaths get reported, so this is actually quite concerning.

The Hindu Times reports on some of these deaths. In the Kanha reserve, 7 tigers have been lost (one to poachers, 6 to fights amonsgt the tigers).

Other deaths have been attributed to poisoning by locals.

This should be appearing in Volume 10, issues 1/2 of the journal Global Crime, sometime in March.

The paper provides preliminary results of research on the Chinese black-market for tiger parts.

One of the seemingly interminable debates we have on poaching, is the appropriate regulatory regime. At the moment there is a lot of NGO, and scientific support, for trade-bans on parrots as a conservation measure.

The premise here, is that poaching is 'bad', so banning the trade will change people's attitudes. They will value parrots as pets less, and thus, the market for poached birds will disappear.

The alternative view is that poaching is a criminal activity, and is driven by socio-economic factors. That means, it's all about the costs and benefits facing poachers. Change these and you'll get changes to poaching levels. In short, people's attitude to wildlife crime is no different to other criminal activity. People's values don't change a lot simply because of regulatory fiat.

These views were tested a few years ago, in a paper published in Conservation Biology This showed that the passage of a ban- the Wild Bird Conservation Act by the USA- led to a drop in reported poaching. While this seemed to support the first view, careful reading showed the paper made some rather gallant assumptions. Primarily, the effect of the WBCA was achieved by ignoring all other socio-economic drivers. So if you ignore socio-economic explanations for poaching that occurred simultaneously then the WBCA has an important effect.

This year I've had a look at this data again. My approach has been a little different. That is, I tried to measure the effects of the possible drivers for poaching simultaneously. In other words, I didn't begin by ruling out other explanations from the start.

This work has been done both with a colleague overseas, and with the help of one of my graduate students. The results are quite interesting. What we are finding, is that large parrots are more likely to be poached than small ones. We are finding that distance to the final markets (US or EU) matter. Countries that are a long way from consumer markets have less poaching. Transport costs actually matter to poachers. We are finding that corrupt countries have more poaching. We are finding that on-site protection deters poaching.

And the effect of the WBCA tradeban? Well, after you measure the effects of all the other socio-economic variables the ban still has an effect. It has stimulated poaching.

The reasons are fairly simple. Restrict trade flows, and black-market prices rise to encourage more poaching. Cutting out a lot of the legal competition through a ban, just hands the remaining market to the criminals. It turns out that a lot of people involved in the trade in parrots, don't feel the need the permission of environmental NGOs to do it. They'll do it whether or not its legal. And law enforcement agencies tend to get a bit more complacent. They believe there's going to be less poaching after a ban. So with less investment in law enforcement, the smugglers suddenly find life is easier. The US Wegner based conspiracy smuggled parrots out of Australia for 8 years before getting caught. And it wasn't the Australian or US law enforcement agebncies that first detected them. It was Wegner's competitors in the US.

Tigers have once again been a bit of a distraction over the last few weeks. I'm flying to Wellington to give another seminar on their conservation. And a couple of weeks ago, gave a talk to our local Alumni chapter.

The basic problem with poaching, is that we've 'locked in' a policy that makes dead tigers worth $US50,000 to Asian criminals. And while poaching isn't the only conservation threat, it often tips wild tiger populations into the falling populations zone.

I've also been making plans to go back to China to err, have a much closer look at the poaching problem. Let's just say I won't be divulging when and where I'm going to the world-wide-web. On the positive side, it means I might get a lot more photographs this time. It should also be a good opportunity to improve my Mandarin.

With other wildlife issues, I should be sending off a paper on parrot poaching (no, bans don't work) with a colleague shortly. And a couple of my graduate students are coming up with interesting results for parrots and butterflies.

From the Checkpoint programme (Radio New Zealand) last night. Interview with Mary Wilson.
listen

Broadcast is about 5 minutes long.