WCS 3-Sentence Science

Getting to the Root of Wildlife Crime

April 28, 2019

Photo credit: ©WCS

Each year, Wildlife Conservation Society scientists publish more than 300 peer-reviewed studies and papers. “WCS 3-Sentence Science” is a regular tip-sheet — in bite sized helpings — of some of this published work.

Here we present Geoffrey Mwedde’s work on reducing wildlife crime:

1. Researchers investigated the drivers and prevalence of wildlife crime in communities surrounding two national parks in Uganda and predicted the performance of potential interventions designed to tackle these crimes.
2. Although poverty is often assumed to be a key driver of wildlife crime, researchers show that better-off households, as well as those that suffer from human/wildlife conflict and those that do not receive any benefits from the parks’ tourism revenue‐sharing, are more likely to be involved in certain types of wildlife crime, especially illegal hunting.
3. The interventions predicted to have the greatest impact on reducing local participation in wildlife crime are those that aim to directly address the drivers including, mitigating damage caused by wildlife and generating financial benefits for park‐adjacent households.

Study and Journal: “Understanding complex drivers of wildlife crime to design effective conservation interventions” from Conservation Biology
WCS Co-Author(s): Geoffrey Mwedde, WCS Uganda

For more information, contact: Stephen Sautner, 718–220–3682, ssautner@wcs.org.