TY - JOUR

T1 - Building a global taxonomy of wildlife offenses

AU - Pascual, M.

AU - Wingard, J.

AU - Bhatri, N.

AU - Rydannykh, A.

AU - Phelps, J.

PY - 2021/12/31

Y1 - 2021/12/31

N2 - Most countries have many pieces of legislation that govern biodiversity, including a range of criminal, administrative, and civil law provisions that state how wildlife must be legally used, managed, and protected. However, related debates in conservation, such as about enforcement, often overlook the details within national legislation that define which specific acts are illegal, the conditions under which laws apply, and how they are sanctioned. Based on a review of 90 wildlife laws in 8 high-biodiversity countries with different legal systems, we developed a taxonomy that describes all types of wildlife offenses in those countries. The 511 offenses are organized into a hierarchical taxonomy that scholars and practitioners can use to help conduct legal analyses. 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. It can be used to provide more nuance legal analyses and facilitate like-for-like comparisons across countries, informing processes to redraft conservation laws, review deregulation efforts, close loopholes, and harmonize legislation across jurisdictions. We applied the taxonomy in a comparison of sanctions in 8 countries for hunting a protected species. We found not only huge ranges in fines (US$0 to $200,000) and imprisonment terms (1.5 years to life imprisonment), but also fundamentally different approaches to designing sanctions for wildlife offenses. The taxonomy also illustrates how future legal taxonomies can be developed for other environmental issues (e.g., invasive species, protected areas). © 2021 The Authors. Conservation Biology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Conservation Biology

AB - Most countries have many pieces of legislation that govern biodiversity, including a range of criminal, administrative, and civil law provisions that state how wildlife must be legally used, managed, and protected. However, related debates in conservation, such as about enforcement, often overlook the details within national legislation that define which specific acts are illegal, the conditions under which laws apply, and how they are sanctioned. Based on a review of 90 wildlife laws in 8 high-biodiversity countries with different legal systems, we developed a taxonomy that describes all types of wildlife offenses in those countries. The 511 offenses are organized into a hierarchical taxonomy that scholars and practitioners can use to help conduct legal analyses. 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. It can be used to provide more nuance legal analyses and facilitate like-for-like comparisons across countries, informing processes to redraft conservation laws, review deregulation efforts, close loopholes, and harmonize legislation across jurisdictions. We applied the taxonomy in a comparison of sanctions in 8 countries for hunting a protected species. We found not only huge ranges in fines (US$0 to $200,000) and imprisonment terms (1.5 years to life imprisonment), but also fundamentally different approaches to designing sanctions for wildlife offenses. The taxonomy also illustrates how future legal taxonomies can be developed for other environmental issues (e.g., invasive species, protected areas). © 2021 The Authors. Conservation Biology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Conservation Biology

KW - crimen de fauna

KW - criminología verde

KW - cumplimiento

KW - enforcement

KW - environmental law

KW - green criminology

KW - illegal wildlife trade

KW - ley ambiental

KW - mercado ilegal de fauna

KW - reglas

KW - rules

KW - wildlife crime

U2 - 10.1111/cobi.13761

DO - 10.1111/cobi.13761

M3 - Journal article

VL - 35

SP - 1903

EP - 1912

JO - Conservation Biology

JF - Conservation Biology

SN - 0888-8892

IS - 6

ER -