Meredith L. Gore

• Dr.
• Professor at University of Maryland, College Park

This chapter considers the gendered dimension of illegal wildlife trade (IWT) in sub-Saharan Africa in the context of the existing regional and national wildlife legal frameworks, policies, and programmes. This context assisted us to explore the potentials of reconceptualising gender-driven wildlife management interventions in the region and member...

Counter‐wildlife crime (CWC) interventions—those that directly protect target wildlife from illegal harvest/persecution, detect and sanction rule‐breakers, and interdict and control illegal wildlife commodities—are widely applied to address biodiversity loss. This systematic map provides an overview of the literature on the effectiveness of CWC int...

1. Counter-wildlife crime interventions ̶ those that directly protect target wildlife from illegal harvest/persecution, detect and sanction rule-breakers, and interdict and control illegal wildlife commodities ̶ are widely applied to address biodiversity loss. This systematic map provides an overview of the literature on the effectiveness of counte...

Domestic dogs, numbering over 900 million worldwide, are commonly kept as service animals and companions. However, their interactions with wildlife have become a growing concern for conservation biologists studying human–wildlife conflicts. It has been reported that domestic dogs pose threats to at least 188 wildlife species, a figure that is likel...

The unsustainable use of wildlife is a primary driver of global biodiversity loss. No comprehensive global dataset exists on what species are in trade, their geographic origins, and trade's ultimate impacts, which limits our ability to sustainably manage trade. The United States (US) is one of the world's largest importers of wildlife, trade data b...

The COVID-19 pandemic was an unexpected event with far-reaching long-term economic, political, and social consequences, entailing disruptive changes with potentially existence- and livelihood threatening consequences. Lessons in resilience from illegal economies such as the illegal wildlife trade could help society better cope with harms and risk f...

The Russian-Ukrainian War, ongoing since 2014, impacts an area containing Emerald Network environmental-protection sites created through the implementation of the Bern Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats. Here we explore the impact of this conflict on institutional links supporting environmental sustainability a...

Historicamente, os conservacionistas têm se concentrado em soluções financeiras e técnicas para os conflitos entre humanos e animais selvagens (Redpath et al., 2013). Ficou claro que, embora essas soluções sejam importantes para gerar um contexto em que a mudança seja possível, é necessário dar mais atenção ao comportamento humano para conseguir a...

The first volume in green criminology devoted to gender, this book investigates gendered patterns to offending, victimisation and environmental harms. The collection advances debate on green crimes and climate change and will inspire students and researchers to foreground gender in reducing the challenges affecting our planet's future.

Wildlife trafficking (WT), the illegal trade of wild fauna, flora, and their parts, directly threatens biodiversity and conservation of trafficked species, while also negatively impacting human health, national security, and economic development. Wildlife traffickers obfuscate their activities in plain sight, leveraging legal, large, and globally l...

Historically, conservationists have focused on financial and technical solutions to human-wildlife conflicts (Redpath et al., 2013). It has become clear that although these are important to generate a context where change is possible, more attention to human behaviour is needed to achieve longer-term human-wildlife coexistence (Veríssimo & Campb...

As human-wildlife conflicts become more frequent, serious and widespread worldwide, they are notoriously challenging to resolve, and many efforts to address these conflicts struggle to make progress. These Guidelines provide an essential guide to understanding and resolving human-wildlife conflict. The Guidelines aim to provide foundations and prin...

Wildlife trafficking is a global phenomenon posing many negative impacts on socio-environmental systems. Scientific exploration of wildlife trafficking trends and the impact of interventions is significantly encumbered by a suite of data reuse challenges. We describe a novel, open-access data directory on wildlife trafficking and a corresponding vi...

Wildlife trafficking, whether local or transnational in scope, undermines sustainable development efforts, degrades cultural resources, endangers species, erodes the local and global economy, and facilitates the spread of zoonotic diseases. Wildlife trafficking networks (WTNs) occupy a unique gray space in supply chains-straddling licit and illicit...

Illegal wildlife trade is a global threat to biodiversity, but its drivers and impacts and ways to combat it vary by taxa. News media framing of instances of illegal trade provides a novel window into understanding public perceptions of these dynamics and potential support for management actions. We used 54 known cases of illegal turtle trade in th...

Illicit Wildlife Trade (IWT) is a serious global crime that negatively impacts biodiversity , human health, national security, and economic development. Many flora and fauna are trafficked in different product forms. We investigate a network interdiction problem for wildlife trafficking and introduce a new model to tackle key challenges associated...

The need to engage communities in wildlife crime prevention is particularly salient at the poaching stage, especially in biodiverse areas where communities overlap with wildlife, and ample constraints to and concerns about formal law enforcement persist. Guardianship is a concept from criminology that examines the willingness of stakeholders to ass...

The criminogenic dimensions of conservation are highly relevant to contemporary protected area management. Research on crime target suitability in the field of criminology has built new understanding regarding how the characteristics of the crime targets affect their suitability for being targeted by offenders. In the last decade, criminologists ha...

The illicit wildlife trade is a pervasive and global problem that has far-reaching impacts on both society and the environment. Aside from threatening numerous species around the world and acting as a potential disease transmission vector for several zoonotic diseases, including the COVID-19 pandemic, this complex system is often linked with other...

Protected areas are increasingly prone to violent extremism spillover, with dramatic consequences for both local people and wildlife populations. Due to the influence of violent extremist groups, science and policy generally fade away. We outline the case of the W-Arly-Pendjari complex of protected areas in West Africa (Burkina Faso, Benin, and Nig...

Disturbance to shorebirds by domestic dogs can cause direct and indirect bird mortality. Dog regulations to minimize disturbance are only effective if people comply with them. Non‐compliance is a universal problem in biodiversity conservation, with an associated body of applicable social science from the field of conservation criminology. We apply...

Negative perceptions and vulnerable feelings about sharks have been one of the greatest barriers to effective shark conservation efforts. This study used a self-report survey of young adults in a coastal state (N = 616) to examine how shark-related risk perceptions (severity and susceptibility) and sensation-seeking tendency influence cognitive vul...

Experts combating wildlife trafficking manually sift through articles about seizures and arrests, which is time consuming and make identifying trends difficult. We apply natural language processing techniques to automatically extract data from reports published by the Eco Activists for Governance and Law Enforcement (EAGLE). We expanded Python spaC...

We have more data about wildlife trafficking than ever before, but it remains underutilized for decision-making. Central to effective wildlife trafficking interventions is collection, aggregation, and analysis of data across a range of source, transit, and destination geographies. Many data are geospatial, but these data cannot be effectively acces...

African wildlife face challenges from many stressors including current and emerging contaminants, habitat and resource loss, poaching, intentional and unintentional poisoning, and climate‐related environmental change. The plight of African vultures exemplifies these challenges due to environmental contaminants and other stressors acting on individu...

Given the global popularity and ubiquity of electronic media coverage of wildlife and conservation, media frame analysis is widely used to help conservation decision-makers understand public opinion, differing goals and priorities, and arguments used in conflict. Nonetheless, media frame analysis has only been used on occasion to elucidate how diff...

The notion that indigenous people and local communities can effectively prevent conservation crime rests upon the assumption that they are informal guardians of natural resources. Although informal guardianship is a concept typically applied to “traditional” crimes, urban contexts, and the global North, it has great potential to be combined with fo...

This paper uses over a decade’s worth of media coverage of sea cucumber crime (smuggling and poaching) in Mexico, in order to characterise the spatio-temporal magnitude of the problem and to better understand the modus operandi of those engaged in this form of wildlife crime. Towards this goal, we analysed and mapped incidents of crime relating to...

The notion of gendered inclusion has been underexplored in wildlife conservation and exploitation. This chapter explores how inclusion of indigenous Baka women (IBW) in Cameroonian conservation was perceived by individuals external to the Baka community. Inclusion may be measured across several wildlife exploitation activities and micro-landscapes;...

African vulture populations are rapidly declining, yet funding and other resources available for their conservation are limited. Improving our understanding of which African vulture species could best serve as an umbrella species for the entire suite of African vultures could help conservationists save time, money, and resources by focusing their e...

The gender dimensions of wildlife trafficking remain understudied even though the problem is of great socio-environmental significance. Data about the roles of women in wildlife trafficking offer critically needed indicators that can contribute to building evidence and setting targets for, and monitoring progress of, sustainable and equitable futur...

The unprecedented global scale of illegal wildlife trade poses threats to humans and ecosystems. Policies calling for increased enforcement to control illicit trade are rooted in the idea that more enforcement will result in greater deterrence, but as yet it is unclear how the illegal wildlife supply chain responds to enforcement actions. To evalua...

Illicit supply networks (ISNs) are composed of coordinated human actors that source, transit, and distribute illicitly traded goods to consumers, while also creating widespread social and environmental harms. Despite growing documentation of ISNs and their impacts, efforts to understand and disrupt ISNs remain insufficient due to the persistent lac...

We develop a quantitative framework for understanding the class of wicked problems that emerge at the intersections of natural, social, and technological complex systems. Wicked problems reflect our incomplete understanding of interdependent global systems and the systemic risk they pose; such problems escape solutions because they are often ill-de...

The scope, scale, and socio-environmental impacts of wildlife crime pose diverse risks to people, animals, and environments. With direct knowledge of the persistence and dynamics of wildlife crime, protected area rangers can be both an essential source of information on, and front-line authority for, preventing wildlife crime. Beyond patrol and cri...

One Health brings the powerful interrelationship between human and wildlife health together with ecosystem health. The initial concept of One Health was formulated decades ago and focused on disease transfer from wildlife to human populations. More recently, the concept has been used to associate resilience to disease with the health of the ecosyst...

Because African vultures are declining due to anthropogenic causes, we linked conservation management with social science by examining the ethical perspectives of individuals responsible for the management of vultures. Understanding these perspectives can help balance scientific knowledge with stakeholder concerns, resulting in more effective decis...

One Health brings the powerful interrelationship between human and wildlife health together with ecosystem health. The initial concept of One Health was formulated decades ago and focused on disease transfer from wildlife to human populations. More recently, the concept has been used to associate resilience to disease with the health of the ecosyst...

Vulture declines are uniquely problematic for socioecological systems because they are nature’s most important scavengers. Intentional and unintentional poisoning, human-wildlife conflict, energy infrastructure, belief-based use, and illegal hunting activities remain threats to vulture populations across Africa. Conservation stakeholders have ident...

Fishing cat populations appear to have declined significantly in recent years due to the loss and fragmentation of inland and coastal wetland habitats. Moreover, there are still large gaps in data on population and density estimates, and threat evaluation, which are vital for conservation assessments. This research aimed to help fill these critical...

We conducted an analysis of agroforestry system efficiency to conserve biodiversity in the Mbalmayo Forest Reserve (MFR) between March 2018 and June 2018. A synthesis of forest fragmentation data observed on multiple strata and scale satellite imageries over 31 years, between 1987 and 2018 as well as, the use of both a floristic and a faunal survey...

We develop a quantitative framework for understanding the class of wicked problems that emerge at the intersections of natural, social, and technological complex systems. Wicked problems reflect our incomplete understanding of interdependent global systems and the hyper-risk they pose; such problems escape solutions because they are often ill-defin...

Urban wildmeat consumption can contribute to significant declines in wildlife populations, ecosystem function, and food insecurity security. Describing types of individuals involved in illegal urban wildmeat trafficking can help distinguish ordinary citizens from members of criminal organizations and urban vs. rural dimensions of the activity. This...

Poaching can contribute to the failure of biodiversity conservation efforts and inflict diverse harms on human livelihoods. We applied crime script analysis to the case of snare poaching—an illegal hunting activity—in three Vietnamese protected areas. Our goal was to enhance the understanding about the opportunity structure underlying snare poachin...

At unsustainable rates and in illegal contexts, the wild meat trade is a driver of species extinction; it can also threaten ecosystem services, local food security and contribute to the risk of zoonotic disease spread. The restaurant and catering sectors are understudied groups in conservation, both with regards to the legal and illegal wild meat t...

Conservation crime is a globally distributed societal problem. Conservation crime science, an emerging interdisciplinary field, has the potential to help address this problem. However, its utility depends on serious reflection on the transposition of crime science approaches to conservation contexts, which may differ in meaningful ways from traditi...

Existing collaborations among public health practitioners, veterinarians, and ecologists do not sufficiently consider illegal wildlife trade in their surveillance, biosafety, and security (SB&S) efforts even though the risks to health and biodiversity from these threats are significant. We highlight multiple cases to illustrate the risks posed by e...

Differences between the outputs of academic science and those of science policy contribute to a critical science-policy challenge — the inability of academia to sufficiently value either the outputs of the policy process as comparable to academic outputs, or the expertise required to maintain and develop policy. Few colleges and universities in the...

Wildlife trafficking is an illegal industry that some estimate is worth $5–23 billion USD annually; it occurs in over 120 countries around the world and involves multiple taxa of species, including mammals, corals, reptiles, bony fishes and birds. Across source, transit and destination geographies of wildlife trafficking networks, wildlife traffick...

Discipline and context specific inquiries into the nature and dynamics of trust are beginning to give way to cross-boundary understandings which seek to outline its more consistent elements. Of particular note within these is an argument that trust is premised on vulnerability; that it has an important nexus with assessments of the ability, benevol...

Vulture declines are uniquely problematic for socioecological systems because they are nature's most important scavengers. Intentional and unintentional poisoning, human-wildlife conflict, energy infrastructure, belief-based use, and illegal hunting activities remain threats to vulture populations across Africa. Conservation stakeholders have ident...

Some nonnative species benefit humans, but many become invasive, with high economic, cultural, and ecological costs. Although many introductions are considered accidental, inadvertent, or unintentional, this terminology often cannot be justified. Prevention policies have been proposed or implemented, and a diversity of proven control methods is ava...

Biological invasion pathways are strongly influenced by human behavior. This research aimed to build new understanding about public perceptions and expectations for possible management responses that might be used after detection of Asian carp in the Laurentian Great Lakes. Although the species are as yet unestablished, our research worked to infor...

To what extent and how do men and women differ in their attitudes about poaching? Although research suggests that women can be more concerned about environmental degradation than men, inquiries about communities in protected areas are ambiguous: women are disproportionately affected by anti‐poaching laws and can have greater motivations to violate...

Some nonnative species benefit humans, but many become invasive, with high economic, cultural, and ecological costs. Although many introductions are considered accidental, inadvertent, or unintentional, this terminology often cannot be justified. Prevention policies have been proposed or implemented, and a diversity of proven control methods is ava...

Promoting alternative livelihoods that do not depend on exploiting biodiversity is a common approach to encourage proconservation attitudes and behaviors among people around protected areas in developing countries. To what extent do participants in alternative livelihoods programs understand the intended connection to conservation objectives? This...

Transnational environmental crime has become the largest financial driver of social conflict, with severe implications for peace and security. Sustainable-development frameworks need to overtly recognize and mitigate the risks posed by transnational environmental crime to environmental security.

This paper presents the results of two experiments designed to test a susceptibility threshold in the shark cage diving context, positing that persons who are high relative to low sensation-seekers are more likely to approach risks that are portrayed as scary and moderately probable. The results of study one provide evidence for the susceptibility...

Natural resource rules exist to control resources and the people that interact with them. These rules often fail because people do not comply with them. Decisions to comply with natural resource rules often are based on attitudes about legitimacy of rules and the perceived risks of breaking rules. Trust in agencies promulgating rules in part may de...

Global demand for elephant ivory is contributing to illegal poaching and significant decline of African elephant (Loxondonta africana) populations. To help mitigate decline, countries with legal domestic ivory markets were recommended by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora to close domestic markets fo...

Wildlife crime is a global phenomenon and new innovative approaches are needed to help bridge the gap between desired conservation outcomes, such as ‘stop the poaching,’ and the methods, theories, and practices best suited to understand and prevent illegal and harmful behavior. Under the Zero Poaching Framework (see figure below) it is widely ackno...

Natural resource rules exist to manage resources and the people that interact with them. These rules often fail because people do not comply with them. Decisions to comply with natural resource rules often are based on attitudes about legitimacy of rules and the perceived risks of breaking rules. Trust in agencies promulgating rules in part may det...

On October 23, 2017 the Stimson Center, United States Department of State, and Michigan State University co-hosted a workshop on leveraging geospatially-enabled information to combat wildlife trafficking, one of the largest illicit markets in the world. The workshop was designed to bring together non-governmental (NGO), U.S. Government (USG), and a...

This chapter profiles conservation criminology in its current form, as well as its key strengths and limitations. Conservation criminology is an approach that relies on the broad cross-sector coordination permitted by design thinking. By integrating natural resources management, risk and decision science, and criminology, conservation criminology-b...

Crime science is a crime-centric approach with a primary mission of crime control and prevention and policy-relevant analysis; it emerged as a complement to criminology yet sought to overcome key shortcomings. Conservation criminology, as an interdisciplinary tactic for thinking about framing the questions and solutions to the problem of natural re...

The extant poaching literature has been criticized as an overly static way of profiling offenders and predicting crime, since the categorization of environmental crime is contingent on the social context as much as offender motivations. Cultural factors have the potential to affect both poaching practices and societal responses to poaching. Cultura...

This important new text introduces conservation criminology as the interdisciplinary study of environmental exploitation and risks at the intersection of human and natural systems. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the book enhances understanding of the various human and organizational behaviors that pose risks to the environment, humans, and d...

One invasive species of increasing concern nationally is feral swine. These animals can host parasites and diseases that threaten livestock and human health, and regularly cause extensive damage to agricultural land, forests, and water resources. Increased understanding about how risk communication plays a role in effective invasive species policy...

The growing complexity and global nature of wildlife poaching threaten the survival of many species worldwide and are outpacing conservation efforts. Here, we reviewed proximal and distal factors, both social and ecological, driving illegal killing or poaching of large carnivores at sites where it can potentially occur. Through this review, we deve...

Smart regulation designed to reduce risks from wildlife trafficking to wildlife and people requires understanding public perceptions of risk as well as the root of wildlife trafficking: poaching. This is because conservation crime is fundamentally about, and risk perception effects, human behavior. Defining and describing how different groups' risk...

Harvest by recreational hunters is a regularly used method to directly influence game populations in public wildlife management throughout the United States, but effectiveness of the method is dependent upon hunters’ willingness and ability to harvest at rates to achieve objectives. Communication is a technique to influence license-buying and harve...