Abstract
AbstractDonors, NGOs, and governments increasingly invest in campaigns to reduce consumer demand for wildlife products in an attempt to prevent the decline of overexploited and poached species. We provide a novel framework to aid these investment decisions based on a demand reduction campaign's return on investment compared to antipoaching law enforcement. A resulting decision rule shows that the relative effectiveness of demand reduction compared to increased enforcement depends entirely on social and economic uncertainties rather than ecological ones. Illustrative case studies on bushmeat and ivory reveal that campaigning to reduce demand may be more cost‐effective than antipoaching enforcement if demand reduction campaigns drive modest price reductions. The outputs from this framework can link targeted monitoring of wildlife product prices to management decisions that protect species threatened by harvest and trade.
Highlights
The illegal harvest of wildlife is one of the greatest threats to biodiversity (Maxwell, Fuller, Brooks, & Watson, 2016)
We propose a simple decision framework to assess the cost-efficacy of demand reduction campaigns and increased antipoaching enforcement for species threatened by illegal harvest and trade (Figure 1)
A demand reduction campaign is more cost effective than increasing enforcement if the campaign can reduce price by more than a critical threshold proportion (p∗R) given by p∗R. This says that the proportional reduction in price must be greater than the proportional reduction in poacher costs that would occur if an additional enforcement investment were redirected toward a demand reduction campaign
Summary
The illegal harvest of wildlife is one of the greatest threats to biodiversity (Maxwell, Fuller, Brooks, & Watson, 2016). The problem is so urgent that from 2010 to 2016, foreign governments and NGOs donated over 1.3 billion $US toward antipoaching measures across Africa and Asia (World Bank Group, 2016). This money has largely gone toward law enforcement that targets poachers, smugglers, and dealers (Challender, Harrop, & MacMillan, 2015). Alternative antipoaching interventions are increasingly gaining donor and government support—ones that attempt to indirectly curtail poaching by reducing consumer demand for wildlife products (Sato & Hough, 2016; Veríssimo & Wan, 2018). Despite organizations moving forward with these interventions, and scientists exploring drivers of demand (Gao & Clark, 2014; Hanley, Sheremet, Bozzola, & MacMillan, 2017; Olmedo et al, 2017), there has yet to be any rigorous study on the effectiveness of demand reduction campaigns for securing populations of poached species compared to enforcement
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
