Wildlife Consumption, Health, and Zoonotic Disease in China After the Emergence of COVID-19

There has been much discussion in the conservation and policy realms of COVID-19 as a zoonotic disease, or a disease transmitted from wildlife to humans. However, wildlife consumption in China is not only a potential source of disease but also a practice embedded in complex beliefs about health. This paper used survey data (N = 974) collected in China in June 2021 to examine attitudes and behaviors related to (a) wildlife consumption, (b) Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and (c) zoonotic risk after the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. 40.1% of respondents self-reported that they are less likely to consume wild animals since the outbreak of COVID-19. Respondents who used wildlife supplements for TCM, who believed in the benefits of wild animal consumption and fresh slaughter of wildlife, and who had higher levels of agreement with the zoonotic origin of COVID-19 were more likely to report that they had decreased their wildlife consumption after the outbreak of COVID-19. Use of wildlife in TCM significantly increased the odds that a respondent believed that COVID-19 was very likely zoonotic. We discuss how situating wildlife consumption within complex beliefs about health and disease can assist with protecting wildlife and public health in the wake of COVID-19.

Potential for informal guardianship in community-based wildlife crime prevention: Insights from Vietnam

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 formal guardianship (such as ranger patrols) to better protect wildlife, incentivize community participation in conservation, and address the limitations of formal enforcement in the global South. Proactive crime prevention is especially important for illegal snare hunting, a practice that has led to pernicious defaunation and which has proved difficult to control due to its broad scope. This paper uses interview data with community members in protected areas in Viet Nam where illegal snare hunting is commonplace to 1) analyze the conditions for informal guardianship in the study locations; 2) explore how community members can become more effective informal guardians; and 3) examine how formal and informal guardianship mechanisms can be linked to maximize deterrence and limit displacement of illegal snaring. Results indicate that conditions for informal guardianship exist but that respondent willingness to intervene depends upon the location, offender activity, and type of offender (outsider versus community member). While respondents generated numerous strategies for wildlife crime prevention, they also listed crime displacement mechanism offenders used to avoid detection. We discuss how informal guardianship can be integrated with formal guardianship into an overall model of situational crime prevention to protect wildlife and incentivize community-led deterrence of illegal snaring.

Wildlife Farms, Stigma and Harm

Wildlife farming, the commercial breeding and legal sale of non-domesticated species, is an increasingly prevalent, persistently controversial, and understudied conservation practice. The adoption or rejection of wildlife farms is a complex process that incorporates numerous ethical considerations: conservation, livelihoods, animal welfare, and cultural practices. This paper uses qualitative interview data with key informants (academics) to analyze (a) the harms and benefits of wildlife farms and (b) the factors that influence whether wildlife farms are stigmatized or accepted. In evaluations of wildlife farming's harms and benefits, respondents incorporated multiple considerations: animal welfare, environmental impacts, scale disparities between sustenance and commercial farms, consumer preferences, species differences, the substitutability and accessibility of wildlife products, and governance. The results further indicated that the stigmatization or acceptance of wildlife farms is affected by the "wildlife farm" label, if there is a stigma around use of a species, a form of production, or the perceived quality of a wildlife product, cultural differences in wildlife use, wildlife consumer typology, geopolitical factors, and demand reduction efforts. This paper analyzes the complexities of wildlife farming such that stakeholders can understand the impacts of this practice on species, human communities, individual animals, and the legal and illegal wildlife trades.

Elephants that help humans Jacob Shell Norton, 2019. 291 pp

An unlikely interspecies partnership hints at a potential model for conservation