Well managed protected areas can reduce the illegal wildlife trade, but the reality is that this crime will persist as long as trafficking networks remain, a new op-ed says.Corruption often provides traffickers a way to circumvent and undermine even well-managed protected areas, suppressing enforcement and concealing wildlife losses.“The question is not whether we can afford to invest in dismantling trafficking networks. Given what we now know about their reach and capacity, the question is whether we can afford not to,” a new op-ed argues.This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
Conservation has historically emphasized protected area management including protecting land, fencing, local enforcement and rangers’ patrols within parks. And indeed, decades of protected area management have demonstrated that strong local protection matters enormously.
But there is a weakness in this logic that we rarely confront directly.
Protected areas can suppress poaching within their boundaries and in neighboring patrolled zones, but they cannot dismantle the criminal networks that finance, organize and replenish wildlife crime from the outside, which impact inside the protected areas as well as landscapes more broadly. As long as those networks remain intact, they will keep recruiting poachers, corrupting officials and — when conditions change (i.e. increased ivory prices, corruption in ranger units, etc.) — resuming operations.
