Emerging trends of the illegal wildlife trade in Mesoamerica SARAH GLUSZEK,DANIEL ARIANO-SÁNCHEZ,PA TRICIA CREMONA
ALEJAN D RA GO Y ENEC HEA,DARÍO ANTONIO LUQUE VERGARA,LEE MCLOUGHLI N ALEJAN D R O MORALE S,ADRIAN REUTER CORTES ,J AV I E R RODRÍGUEZ FONS E C A J EREMY RADACHOWSKY and ANDREW KNIGHT
Abstract Mesoamerica is the world’s third largest biodi- versity hotspot and has c. 4,000 wildlife species protected under CITES. Despite the high biodiversity in the region, there is limited global attention, data and funding for con- servation. The continued exploitation of wildlife species for the trade requires a more proactive approach to address emerging trends, and low-cost and effective solutions to pre- vent species decline. Over a 5-month period in 2017,we used expert-driven horizon scanning, facilitated online, to identify emerging trends of the illegal wildlife trade inMesoamerica. We found that the main emerging trends included digital and technological advancements, greater regional access to the global community, developments in trafficking techniques and growing demand for certain species. Our findings demonstrate that horizon scanning can be used as a tool for identifying emerging trends of illegal wildlife trade in data-poor contexts. We recommend that horizon scanning is used regularly for systematic monitoring of trends and to prioritize resources for immediate and emerging trends in illegal wildlife trade.
Keywords Central America, expert elicitation, horizon scanning, online focus group, prioritization, transnational crime, wildlife crime, wildlife trafficking
Supplementary material for this article is available at
doi.org/10.1017/S0030605319001133
Introduction SARAH GLUSZEK* (Corresponding author,
orcid.org/0000-0003-1789-7283)
Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, Silwood Campus, Ascot, Berkshire, UK. E-mail
sarah.gluszek@
gmail.com
DANIEL ARIANO-SÁNCHEZ† Department of Natural Sciences and Environmental Health, Faculty of Technology, Natural Sciences and Maritime Sciences, University of Southeast Norway, Bø, Norway
PATRICIA CREMONA Wildlife Conservation Society, Flores, Guatemala ALEJANDRA GOYENECHEA Defenders of Wildlife, Washington, DC, USA
DARÍO ANTONIO LUQUE VERGARA Ministerio de Ambiente de Panamá, Panama City, Panama LEE MCLOUGHLIN Wildlife Conservation Society, Belize City, Belize
ALEJANDRO MORALES ARCAS Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre, Peten, Guatemala ADRIAN REUTER CORTES Wildlife Conservation Society, Mexico City, Mexico JAVIER RODRÍGUEZ FONSECA Fundación Promar, San José, Costa Rica JEREMY RADACHOWSKY Wildlife Conservation Society, New York, USA ANDREW KNIGHT Imperial College London, London, UK
*Present address: Fauna & Flora International, David Attenborough Building, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QZ, UK
†Also at: Centro de Estudios Ambientales y Biodiversidad, Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, Guatemala City, Guatemala
Received 28 February 2019. Revision requested 8 May 2019. Accepted 3 September 2019. First published online 24 June 2020.
threatening vulnerable and irreplaceable ecosystems (McRae et al., 2016; IPBES, 2018), national security and sustainable development (Nellemann et al., 2014). The global value of the illegal wildlife trade (i.e. illegal hunting, logging, fishing, and trading of wild fauna and flora), although difficult to measure, is estimated to be USD 7–23 billion per annum (Nellemann et al., 2016), with 15%of recorded global wildlife seizures originating from Latin America (UNODC, 2016). Within this region, Mesoamerica is the world’s third largest biodiversity hotspot (CEPF, 2016) and holds the second lar- gest barrier reef system. Approximately 4,000 species from Mesoamerica are listed under CITES, one-third of all the species listed in Latin America. Despite the biodiversity value of the Mesoamerican region, assessments of the scale of illegal trade in Latin America have focused primarily on South America (UNODC, 2016). Previous analyses of trends in wildlife trade in Mesoamerica have been limited by their reliance on seizure data and legal trade reported under CITES (UNEP-WCMC, 2014), which underrepresent the scale of the trade because of low data availability, poor enforce- ment and widespread corruption (Goyenechea & Indenbaum, 2015). Illegal wildlife trade poses a ‘wicked problem’ (Willemsen
T
&Watson, 2018,p. 256), the tackling of which demands in- tegrated research approaches, for instance those that com- bine the risk and decision sciences (Gore, 2017). Horizon scanning is a risk analysis tool that detects threats and iden- tifies persistent issues and emerging trends (van Rij, 2010). Widely used in the business sector, it was introduced into conservation to forecast global trends of emerging issues (Sutherland et al., 2010) and has been applied to illegal wild- life trade at a global scale (Esmail et al., 2019). Horizon
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Oryx, 2021, 55(5), 708–716 © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605319001133
he unsustainable exploitation of wildlife, both fauna and flora, is a continuing driver of species loss,
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