Today record levels of funding are being invested in enforcement and antipoaching measures to tackle the "war on poaching," but many species are on the path to extinction. In our view, intensifying enforcement effort is crucial, but will ultimately prove an inadequate long-term strategy with which to conserve high-value species. This is because: regulatory approaches are being overwhelmed by the drivers of poaching and trade, financial incentives for poaching are increasing due to rising prices and growing relative poverty between areas of supply and centers of demand, and aggressive enforcement of trade controls, in particular bans, can increase profits and lead to the involvement of organized criminals with the capacity to operate even under increased enforcement effort. With prices for high-value wildlife rising, we argue that interventions need to go beyond regulation and that new and bold strategies are needed urgently. In the immediate future, we should incentivize and build capacity within local communities to conserve wildlife. In the medium term, we should drive prices down by reexamining sustainable off-take mechanisms such as regulated trade, ranching and wildlife farming, using economic levers such as taxation to fund conservation efforts, and in the long-term reduce demand through social marketing programs.

The escalating illegal wildlife trade (IWT) is one of the most high-profile conservation challenges today. The crisis has attracted over US$350 million in donor and government funding in recent yearsPalabras Clave: aprendizaje social, cadenas de resultados, caza furtiva, conservación basada en la comunidad, estándares abiertos, sustentos

International trade in wildlife is a major threat to biodiversity conservation. CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, is the primary mechanism for maintaining sustainability in international wildlife trade. However, CITES has been criticised because it relies on regulatory measures but disregards the economic reality of wildlife trade. Through means of a case study on the trade in pangolins (Manis spp.) in Asia, we critically evaluate the CITES approach to controlling trade and demonstrate significant inadequacies to it. This is because it fails to accurately monitor supply, particularly where trade is illegal, it fails to consider the impact of trade controls in realistic terms, and it does little to consider the complex nature of demand for wildlife products or contend with changing market dynamics. To more effectively manage trade we argue that reforms are needed within CITES. Specifically, improved monitoring of supply (e.g., by accounting for illegal and legal trade) and monitoring of demand and prices for wildlife (e.g., through national wildlife consumption surveys) would enable the Convention to function from a more comprehensive understanding of wildlife trade. These data, integrated with the Convention's existing trade database, would allow more realistic evaluation of trade controls, and could inform decision-making and the implementation of interventions which go beyond regulation and address demand directly. In a world of rapid economic and social change understanding markets and addressing demand as well as supply is essential to conserving the world's trade threatened species.

a b s t r a c tInternational trade in wildlife is a key threat to biodiversity conservation. CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, seeks to ensure international wildlife trade is sustainable, relying on trade bans and controls. However, there has been little comprehensive review of its effectiveness and here we review approaches taken to regulate wildlife trade in CITES. Although assessing its effectiveness is problematic, we assert that CITES boasts few measurable conservation successes. We attribute this to: non-compliance, an over reliance on regulation, lack of knowledge and monitoring of listed species, ignorance of market forces, and influence among CITES actors. To more effectively manage trade we argue that interventions should go beyond regulation and should be multi-faceted, reflecting the complexity of wildlife trade. To inform these interventions we assert an intensive research effort is needed around six key areas: (1) factors undermining wildlife trade governance at the national level, (2) determining sustainable harvest rates for, and adaptive management of CITES species, (3) gaining the buy-in of local communities in implementing CITES, (4) supply and demand based market interventions, (5) means of quantifying illicit trade, and (6) political processes and influence within CITES.

Combating the surge of illegal wildlife trade (IWT) devastating wildlife populations is an urgent global priority for conservation. There are increasing policy commitments to take action at the local community level as part of effective responses. However, there is scarce evidence that in practice such interventions are being pursued and there is scant understanding regarding how they can help. Here we set out a conceptual framework to guide efforts to effectively combat IWT through actions at community level. This framework is based on articulating the net costs and benefits involved in supporting conservation versus supporting IWT, and how these incentives are shaped by anti-IWT interventions. Using this framework highlights the limitations of an exclusive focus on "top-down," enforcement-led responses to IWT. These responses can distract from a range of other approaches that shift incentives for local people toward supporting conservation rather than IWT, as well as in some cases actually decrease the net incentives in favor of wildlife conservation.

Vietnam is a significant consumer of wildlife, particularly wild meat, in urban restaurant settings. To meet this demand, poaching of wildlife is widespread, threatening regional and international biodiversity. Previous interventions to tackle illegal and potentially unsustainable consumption of wild meat in Vietnam have generally focused on limiting supply. While critical, they have been impeded by a lack of resources, the presence of increasingly organised criminal networks and corruption. Attention is, therefore, turning to the consumer, but a paucity of research investigating consumer demand for wild meat will impede the creation of effective consumer-centred interventions. Here we used a mixed-methods research approach comprising a hypothetical choice modelling survey and qualitative interviews to explore the drivers of wild meat consumption and consumer preferences among residents of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Our findings indicate that demand for wild meat is heterogeneous and highly context specific. Wild-sourced, rare, and expensive wild meat-types are eaten by those situated towards the top of the societal hierarchy to convey wealth and status and are commonly consumed in lucrative business contexts. Cheaper, legal and farmed substitutes for wild-sourced meats are also consumed, but typically in more casual consumption or social drinking settings. We explore the implications of our results for current conservation interventions in Vietnam that attempt to tackle illegal and potentially unsustainable trade in and consumption of wild meat and detail how our research informs future consumer-centric conservation actions.

No abstract

Overexploitation is one of the main threats to biodiversity, but the intensity of this threat varies geographically. We identified global concentrations, on land and at sea, of 4543 species threatened by unsustainable commercial harvesting. Regions under high-intensity threat (based on accessibility on land and on fishing catch at sea) cover 4.3% of the land and 6.1% of the seas and contain 82% of all species threatened by unsustainable harvesting and >80% of the ranges of Critically Endangered species threatened by unsustainable harvesting. Currently, only 16% of these regions are covered by protected areas on land and just 6% at sea. Urgent actions are needed in these centers of unsustainable harvesting to ensure that use of species is sustainable and to prevent further species’ extinctions.