Wildlife crime, such as poaching and the trafficking of endangered animals and their body parts, is often perceived as a conservation problem, focused on the loss of endangered animals or the destruction of habitat. An Illinois State University professor wants to use a different crime-fighting approach.
Jackie Schneider, chair of the Department of Criminal Justice Sciences, wants to apply criminological techniques to wildlife crime in order to better understand what motivates poachers, traffickers and the people who buy illegal products.
“By identifying things like tiger skins, ivory, rhino horns, shark fins and other animal parts as property, criminologists can better understand the market for those goods,” she said. “Once we understand that, we can use a market reduction approach to fight that sort of crime.”
That approach involves identifying “hot” products and then following them to see who is involved in the crimes, and why. A longtime wildlife advocate, she began looking at wildlife crime from a market reduction standpoint after working on government crime reduction strategies in Britain during the mid-1990s. A key element is understanding how criminals make decisions. In the case of wildlife and environmental crime, the motivation is almost always economic.
Schneider’s book, “Sold into Extinction.”
“We have to look at the local economies in areas that are hotspots for illegal logging, poaching and wildlife trafficking,” Schneider said. “The areas are often poor and there’s money to be made from those kinds of activities. The circumstances are different depending on the locations and the species involved, so there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Once we understand the local market we can better trace those products to see where they go.”
Schneider said ivory, rhino horns, and animal skins and parts are status symbols and often end up in the possession of wealthy customers around the world. Governments are sometimes complicit in the trafficking of those items and Schneider said the arrest of top-level customers and crime-enabling government officials would go a long way toward breaking the cycle. However, changing attitudes and the market at the local level is the real key to cutting off the supply of illegal items.
“To some, rhino horns have more market value than gold, platinum or cocaine,” she said. “Part of the approach to wildlife crime is showing the real costs to people and local communities and asking the question ‘What happens when the animals are gone?’ Another component is working with local economies to find alternatives to those illegal activities.”
Surprisingly, taking a criminological approach to the issue of wildlife crime has been slow to catch on. Schneider is part of a small group of criminologists, including researchers from Rutgers and Michigan State University, who are working on the issue. She is the author of Sold into Extinction: The Global Trade in Endangered Species, named a Distinguished Book of the Year by the American Society of Criminology’s International Division. She has presented on the topic at conferences around the world, including a recent World Bank-sponsored wildlife criminology symposium in Washington, D.C.
“For a long time wildlife crime has been seen as a conservation issue and many criminologists tend to dismiss it,” said Schneider. “Conservationists look at this in terms of ecosystem damage and wildlife reduction, but it’s really a man-made problem and we need to treat this the same way we treat other types of crime.”
