Michelle Anagnostou

University of Waterloo | UWaterloo · Department of Geography and Environmental Management (Environment)

Protecting wildlife and other natural resources requires engaging and empowering local communities, ensuring compliance with rules, and ongoing monitoring and research. At the frontline of these efforts are rangers. Despite their critical role in maintaining the integrity of parks and protected areas, rangers across the world are exposed to precari...

The global illegal wildlife trade has been anecdotally linked to other serious crimes, such as fraud, corruption, and money laundering, as well as the cross-border trafficking of drugs, arms, counterfeit goods, and persons. As research on this topic is scarce and sporadic, we conducted a scoping literature review to gather information across multip...

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a global recession and mass unemployment. Through reductions in trade and international tourism, the pandemic has particularly affected rural economies of tropical low- and middle-income countries where biodiversity is concentrated. As this adversity is exacerbating poverty in these regions, it is important to exami...

The intensified illegal trade of wildlife has contributed to the unsustainable decline of wildlife populations, the de-stabilization of ecosystems, and threatens economic development and human security. Though often lacking empirical evidence, convergence theory has emerged recently as a topic of interest among researchers, practitioners, and the m...

Managed retreat is gaining considerable attention as a component of flood risk reduction, climate change adaptation, and community resilience-building in Canada and other countries. However, supportive government policies and programs, on-the-ground assistance for homeowners, and connections to wider community planning processes are needed for such...

This rapid scoping review of existing evidence and research gaps addressed the following question: what research evidence exists and what are the research gaps at global, regional, and national levels on interventions to protect jobs, small- and medium-sized enterprises, and formal/informal sector workers in socioeconomic response to the coronaviru...

Wildlife crime in protected areas remains a major challenge to conservation. However, little is known about the role of local communities in providing information on illegal activities to help improve law enforcement efforts in protected areas. As an initial exploration of this complex topic, we aimed to understand the perceptions of law enforcemen...