James Wingard

A number of activities have taken place to reduce the negative impacts arising from the rapid growth of linear infrastructure such as fences, roads and railroads in Central Asia. Activities included the production of studies and reports, the organization of workshops as well as the development of guidelines. The Conference of the Parties is invited...

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...

As of January 22, 2021, over 97M human cases and 2.1M deaths have been reported globally due to COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV-2. Both figures are almost double what they were just two months prior; with infection rates and mortality still climbing. The international response has of course been strong with significant attention being given to how we c...

Global biodiversity loss is occurring at an alarming rate, with a growing consensus that we are entering a sixth mass extinction. Rapid human development and associated habitat loss, principally through agriculture, infrastructure and extractive industries, is a significant contributor. The critically endangered western chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes...

Anti-money laundering (AML) laws have the potential to play a crucial, game-changing role in transforming wildlife trafficking from a low-risk/high-reward to a high-risk environment. Yet despite the 2017 UN Resolution callings on countries to leverage AML laws in the fight against wildlife trafficking, they remain under-utilised. Investigations and...

Building on the detailed reviews of Mongolia’s wildlife trade conducted in 2005 and 2015, this report takes on the related task of examining the developments and status of the country’s legal framework for combatting illegal wildlife trade. The primary basis for this research is a set of international standards and practices for legislative content...

Building on the legal review conducted by WCS in 2021, this report examines a selected set of key elements that provide a basis for the management of transnational marine protected areas. While the report focuses on Kenya and Tanzania, the methods developed for the compilation of national and international legal frameworks, as well as the identific...

La elaboración de mejores prácticas legislativas, cualquiera que sea el ámbito temático, es en todos los casos un proceso extenso que se mide generalmente en años o décadas y en el que contribuyen múltiples y variadas fuentes. En el ámbito de la confiscación de animales silvestres víctimas del tráfico, esta publicación pretende realizar un aporte i...

Although early efforts in the global accounting of wildlife seizures have succeeded in exposing the general trends and particularities of the illegal wildlife trade, there is still much unknown about the fate of countless live animals being confiscated and how they are being managed in the context of criminal prosecutions. This publication address...

A Model International Agreement on Repatriation of Trafficked Live Wild Animals has been developed as a legal resource for the international community engaged in implementing Article VIII of CITES and facing the challenge of growing animal seizures and confiscations as enforcement against wildlife trafficking increases. The Agreement covers arrang...

Low sentencing against wildlife criminals has been partially linked to the mishandling of evidence in many jurisdictions. Either because of a lack of human and technical capacity or corruption, or the mishandling of crime scenes and evidence, prosecutors are set up for failure. This work aims to contribute to better evidence handling by providing...

A Model International Agreement on Repatriation of Trafficked Live Wild Animals has been developed as a legal resource for the international community engaged in implementing Article VIII of CITES and facing the challenge of growing animal seizures and confiscations as enforcement against wildlife trafficking increases. The model legislation can be...

Establishing a wildlife friendly corridor for the Trans-Mongolia Railway (TMR) is a story about two sides of the tracks, as much for Mongolia's wildlife as it is for its laws. Looking at its laws, on one side is a strong international basis and a national legal system that not only recognizes this but has started on the path to implementing it. But...

This study is focused on the legal protection of two endangered animal species: the Cross River gorilla (Gorilla gorilla diehli) and the Nigerian-Cameroon chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes ellioti). The study is based on specific inquiries directed at the national laws and regulations of Cameroon and Nigeria to verify implementation of a selection of the...

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...

In the autumn of 2017, with the financial support of the Arcus Foundation, Legal Atlas launched the Legis-Apes Project to provide a closer look at the state of legal protection afforded to great apes and gibbons, as well as specific guidance on additional measures range countries may take to ensure full legal protection for them. The one-year resea...

This brief explores the many legal and enforcement challenges posed by internet-based illegal wildlife trade (IWT). It discusses how this type of trade creates a set of problems for officials in addition to the challenges they already with face off line wildlife trade; forcing them to operate in a trans-jurisdictional, virtual space that they, and...

Working on behalf of the Zoological Society of London, members of the Legal Atlas team conducted a comprehensive field survey of wildlife trade in Mongolia, resulting in a extensive report, Silent Steppe II: Mongolia's Wildlife Trade Crisis, Ten Years Later. The project is a sequel to the most comprehensive IWT study conducted in Mongolia to date,...

Afghanistan appears to be following the global trend of increasing trade in the face of decreasing wildlife populations, based on the few studies that have been conducted on the status of wildlife take and trade in the country since the 1970s. In order to update the available information, WCS conducted a series of wildlife trade and hunting surveys...

This report is a joint initiative of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Council for Game and Wildlife Conservation (CIC). The report was authored by Elisa Morgera (FAO Legal Officer) and Jim Wingard (FAO International Legal Consultant). It was elaborated on the basis of Part I of the regional stu...

The study had two objectives. The first was to distil a set of region-specific messages on how to draft effective legislation on hunting and wildlife management. The second objective was to analyse hunting and wildlife conservation laws and the linkages with key related legislation, in particular, forestry and land laws, as well as laws governing r...

Silent Steppe is the product of the Environment and Social Development unit in the East Asia and Pacific region of the World Bank in a series of activities by the Bank and our development partners to understand the driving forces of wildlife trade, its scale and operation, and to identify successful solutions to address illegal trade. A previous pu...

Access by the poor to natural resources (land, forests, water, fisheries, pastures, etc.), is essential for sustainable poverty reduction. The livelihoods of rural people without access, or with very limited access to natural resources are vulnerable because they have difficulty in obtaining food, accumulating other assets, and recuperating after n...

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 pre...