Recent reports and studies document dramatic declines in a wide variety of wildlife species in Mongolia. The prime driver in these declines appears to be illegal and unsustainable hunting, both for local trade and consumption and for the international market. While data on these declines are sparse, comparisons of survey reports since the 1980s present evidence that some species may have declined by up to 90% in recent years. We outline the situation for eight major species of wildlife in Mongolia (saiga antelope, Mongolian gazelle, red deer, musk deer, argali, brown bear, Siberian marmot, and saker falcon). We then review the existing legal conditions and government efforts to control this situation, and suggest specific changes and actions that Mongolia should take to halt these dramatic declines in wildlife populations and avoid what may soon become an extinction crisis.
Environmental laws are ubiquitous, including to the field of conservation where they define how wildlife can be legally used, managed and protected. However, debates about environmental law regularly overlook the details within national legislation that define which specific acts are illegal, where laws apply, and how they are sanctioned. Based on a review of nearly 200 wildlife laws in 8 countries, we developed a taxonomy that describes all types of wildlife offences in those countries. The 511 offences are organized into a hierarchical taxonomy that scholars and practitioners can use to help conduct legal analyses globally, providing more nuance and facilitating like-for-like comparisons of laws across countries. This is significant amidst competing calls to strengthen, deregulate and reform wildlife legislation, particularly in response to fears over zoonotic threats and large-scale biodiversity loss. The taxonomy can be used to analyse legal reforms (e.g., new laws, deregulation, closing loopholes, harmonising legislation), or to establish international standards. For example, we apply the taxonomy to compare how 8 countries sanction the offence of “hunting a protected species”, to explore different scales and approaches to imposing fines and imprisonment. The taxonomy also illustrates how future legal taxonomies can be developed in the environment sector.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.