This morning started with the pleasant news my paper on American alligator conservation has been accepted for publication. This was actually a look at the interplay between alligator farming and hunting, and the conservation flow-on effects of these.
There's basically two camps on the issue of wildlife farming. One is that wildlife farming can help conservation. One proposed reason is that farming increases supply, reduces prices and deters poaching. So not surprisingly, it often mooted as a policy to employ if poaching is a major conservation problem.
The other camp argues that it is a measure that exacerbates extinction risks. Legal trade provides a potential vehicle for laundering. Some also worry that any stigma associated with consumption by bans, will end and demand rise. The last point is a little tricky, because stigma effects are a little difficult to identify and measure. And it's also often asserted it can't possibly work because shooting wildlife in the actual wild, is much cheaper than raising than on a farm or ranch.
Anyway, the whole point about alligators, is that it is a conservation success story, poaching has not resumed but has collapsed, and it is a rare empirical case where farming and hunting coexist. Instead of having to come up with various theoretical models, we can actually look at what happens.
The basic message is that we tend to be far too pessimistic about the ability of wildlife farming to contribute to conservation. None of the issues identified in the arguments above hold. Prices haven't collapsed despite massive increases in output, while poaching has for all practical purposes disappeared.
There are some good reasons why. Most of the positive conservation effects are felt through the non-price paths. Leather-manufacturers switched to legal skins because of volume and quality reasons. Consumers switched to legal products out of 'green' motives. And some of the reasons for pessimism didn't hold. Pessimistic theoretical models tend to assume the wildlife is open-access. This is an extreme case, which is known to lead to over-harvest. It lead to the almost complete extinction of bison in America, moas in NZ by early Polynesians and also, the collapse of several species of whales in the 20th century. It shouldn't come as a surprise, that if your model includes an open access condition, you'll get a decline in wildlife. That's going to hold under a variety of conservation policies. It practically makes the assumption of farming redundant. And no, it didn't actually apply in the case of alligators.
Of course, this isn't arguing that wildlife farming is a general solution to conservation problems. But there could well be more cases where it could support conservation, it we weren't quite as pessimistic about its chances.
Posts Tagged conservation
It’s a publication! May 22
1 CommentGoing feral in the weekend May 20
No CommentsWhat Ive found of late, is that it is harder to disconnect from the rest of the world, simply because connecting is now so much easier. It's a world now of tablets, smartphones and computers everywhere. So of late, I've started disconnecting completely- at least one day a week. Sunday is now my day for going feral. I disappear into a local nature reserve with nothing more than a daypack, some supplies and a camera.
The last hike was back into Okura. I figured that the actual rain would keep a lot of people away and I knew the secluded beach had a small population of NZ dotterels (tuturiwhatu). This small shore bird is actually endangered. So, it is kind of a special place to visit. Last weekend I had watched them with my son, from the edge of the beach with binoculars. This time around, I thought I'd try for some photos.
I guessed right with the rain keeping people away. So it was just a matter of hiking through the forest to reach the beach. Along the ridge lines the forest thinned out into manuka and tanekaha trees. 
Down at the beach it was close to high tide. This means the shore birds were close enough to photograph, with sufficient patience. The trick so often is to try to shoot at their eye level. That means getting down low- or lying flat on damp sand. The bonus is you look a lot less threatening to the birds.
To start with, there's a couple of dotterel photos. The first is my favourite and required very little cropping.
The mature males are in their breeding colours
The beach also has a thriving population of oyster catchers
While the land contiguous to the beach had a lot of chaffinches…
and even the odd kingfisher
Can the surge in elephant killing be stopped? Apr 24
No CommentsThe CITES meeting in Bangkok (March 2013) highlighted once more the wavering fortunes of wild elephants. We are forced to recognise that poaching has been on a steady increase for over a decade, and that all steps to prevent this so far has failed.
At the policy level, the conflict remains one of whether a strict international ban on the trade in tusks will succeed, or whether a regulated trade will work instead. The skepticism about the international ban approach (which dates back to the 1989 CITE meeting) stems from several factors. These include the failure of the ban and accompanying education campaigns to reduce demand in foreign markets (which are to be honest, not exclusively Asian).
Source: Stock.Xchng
To move the debate on a bit, I'd like to reproduce an argument Michael Eustace made in a letter to the Business Day
DEAR SIR, The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species banned trade in ivory in 1989 but that has not stopped elephant poaching. There are many different estimates as to how many elephant are poached each year but 20,000 would seem a reasonable assumption. Most of the ivory of about 200 tons is sold to Chinese buyers with criminals making all the profit. The wildlife donor agencies persist in promoting increased law enforcement and changing the Chinese mindset as being the solution but neither is working as is evidenced by the ongoing poaching. Law enforcement in a corrupt society is ineffective and changing the Chinese mindset has been tried over many years and proved futile. China wants ivory and Africa has ivory. Both would prefer a legal trade rather than a criminal trade. Africa can sell the ivory that is gathered from natural deaths to China so as to satisfy some of the demand. There are about 500,000 elephant in Africa and some 10,000 die each year of natural causes. They leave 100 tons of ivory. That ivory could be sold by a broker, with a monopoly over all legal supplies of ivory, to a Chinese cartel of ivory carvers who could then sell to licensed retailers. That would establish a clear legal pipeline and China, as part of the deal, could undertake to close down the illegal trade and also confiscate stocks from speculators. With the price of ivory having risen strongly in recent years, speculation is likely to have been a significant part of overall demand. Some poaching will continue but it will be a lot less and a legal trade will save the lives of at least 10,000 elephants every year. In addition there would be $100 million in profits each year for Africa’s parks rather than international criminals.
This neatly encapsulates some of the frustration some conservationists have with the ban. It is the bans failure that motivates the rethink of the strategy. The basic weakness as I see it, is the ban was implemented to frustrate the illegal market of the 1980s. Expecting it to still work in the 2000s depends on the black-market not having changed- that the criminal conspiracies have not worked out means to circumvent it. The problem is the black market has changed. It is no longer hidden within the legal market. It operates with independent smuggling and sale into an underground market (at least, within China the unregistered factories and shops serve this function).
There is also a lot of elephants in Southern and Eastern Africa. That's where the 500,000 mentioned above comes from. 
Source: www.grida.no; Author: Riccardo Pravettoni, GRID-Arendal
We are in a position where natural deaths could supply a lot of demand in China. To put things into perspective, the one-off sale in 2008 to China of ivory, was an export of 62 tonnes- which they are eeking out by releasing 4-5 tonnes a year. As the letter above notes, we can actually supply a lot more than that, every year.
At the moment, the Chinese legal trade is really, just too small-scale to be impacting on the illegal trade. If we are serious about reducing poaching then this trade will have to increase in volume to crowd out the illegal market.
But is it research? Feb 03
No CommentsThe recent trip to China was focused on the elephant ivory trade in that country. Since 2008 the Chinese government has decided to support and sustain the ivory carving industry. Ostensibly this is because it is recognised as an example of intangible cultural heritage. In 2008 62 tones of raw ivory was legally purchased from four southern African countries, under the auspices of CITES. The shipment arrived in 2009. In background terms the data we have suggest that illegal market in ivory has been growing for about a decade. So there is a lot of concern that about potential links between the legal and illegal markets.
As we were working in China, a side issue to our research did come to light. This is the efforts by some Westerners to research the black market. One tactic is to try to buy illegal ivory from ivory-dealers. (Mostly however, shops are visited to see if they are selling ivory legally or in compliance with regulations).
I’m really baulking at this 'buy illegal ivory' ploy. It took us two years of groundwork to get access to the Chinese ivory-market. The positive is we got superb access to all kinds of people and loads of good information. Imagining you can just drop into China and then start finding out what’s happening by trying to buy illegal ivory is hopelessly naïve.
The problem goes beyond this however. The first is the ethical dimension. Pretending you are interested in illegal ivory is a deliberate deceit. Now, whilst this is an important method to draw people out of the illegal market, it’s something that has to be done with a lot of safeguards. The typical buyer of legal ivory products is a mature, informed collector. It is someone who knows the differences in Shanghai, Guangzhou or Beijing styles. It is someone who can appreciate the differences in clarity, density and hardness of the ivory. It is someone familiar with the actual master carvers. It starts to become an absurd comical farce when Westerners pretend they’re a credible consumer. I was told of some appalling examples of this by dealers. They’re not being fooled.
If you haven’t done your preparation and background research properly then I believe, it is unethical to be posing as a potential buyer of illegal ivory. This is compounded by the risk of entrapment. The interest in buying ivory may cause the person to try to find illegal ivory for you. Again, this is murky ethical ground with potentially dubious consequences.
Not only is the ethics of this method that worries me. I’m also concerned that it can generate misleading information. Given the actual purchase cannot be carried out, the ‘potential buyer’ gambit cannot separate transactions that would:
1) use fake ivory (of which much exists) or
2) legal ivory brought from a registered retailer, and then resold with a markup to the ersatz consumer, or
3) illegal ivory from a genuine black-market source
If someone conspicuously ignorant of the ivory market is giving the impression they have more money than sense, selling them fakes is a pretty low risk way to make a quick return. Perhaps we should not be quite so surprised at "researchers" who find it so easy to get offers of illegal ivory in China.
My last peeve is it makes the work of others researchers harder. We did the ground work. Yet we encountered suspicion over our ‘agenda’ as a consequence of these blundering efforts. That meant information was being held back. It’s something that compromises research by people who do know what they’re doing.
A tiger diversion Feb 01
No CommentsThe expedition to China was almost entirely focused on the trade in elephant ivory. This followed from the 2006 decision by the government to treat ivory carving as an intangible cultural asset, and the 2008 sale of ivory to China from Africa.
Not all the time was spent on ivory. We managed to squeeze in a short expedition to look at Siberian tigers (lao hu). China's northern most province (Heilong Jiang) reaches into the Siberian geographical region. And at -25 to -30 C, the evidence is very obvious.
Having the right contacts does make it easier. The -25 C temperatures though, add back some challenge :). Here's a couple of pics from the trip.
"Old Tiger"
"On Ice"
For those curious about the gear, these were actually taken with my Nex-5 rather than an SLR kit.
expedition news Jan 26
No CommentsOver half way into expedition at this point. I can recommend the Metropole Hotel in Shanghai. It has the most comfortable beds I've slept in, since I first began traveling in China.
My laptop became deadweight on Tuesday when the screen died. I guess it's a good test of my windows phone's substitute abilities. It's not a perfect substitute alas. No SD card reader, small screen, no ethernet socket.
Internet service in China is still lagging behind West.
Ten Years On: The Elephant Ivory Problem Jan 14
1 CommentIn 2003 the chapter I wrote on wildlife trade[1] mentioned the illegal ivory market a few times. This was in the wider context of the conservation effects of bans. The chapter was based on a 2001 meeting in Cambridge University in September. I was unable to attend this meeting because, well, the 9/11 terrorist attacks stopped a lot of international flights at the time.
The (commercial) international trade in ivory was effectively banned at the 1989 Convention on International Trade In Endangered Species (CITES) meeting. Elephants were listed on Appendix I instead of Appendix II. An Appendix I listing does not permit commercial trade in the wildlife or their parts. It has no implications for domestic trade however. An Appendix II listing allows a regulated trade under a system of permits (and sometimes quotas).
There have been two one-off sales of stockpiled ivory to China and Japan since then. The demand for ivory products has not as far as we can tell, waned in these Asian markets. Rising incomes in China are if anything, leading to an increase in demand. The one-off sales are intended to reward those African countries with well-managed elephant populations. If you have elephants, then you accumulate tusks (from natural mortality, culls etc). The better you are at conserving elephants, the more there is, and the more tusks you accumulate. Cashing in those tusks can be a way to support this conservation. It’s also contentious. Many conservationists continue to support a tough, ban-the-trade strategy.
From the book chapter ten years ago:
The rationale for the ban was straightforward. The legal trade in ivory was providing poachers with a means of smuggling ivory into final markets in Europe, North America and Asia. Authorities and consumers were unable to distinguish poached ivory from legally obtained ivory. This gave poachers the least-cost way to market their product in overseas markets. Hence if the legal trade was sacrificed, poachers would not have this smuggling route available. The sacrifice did, however, give elephant populations a chance to recover p48
This is a view I share with some other conservationists. The 1989 ivory-ban was a temporary measure. It was going to buy time for elephants. That time could be used to implement better trade and management. Or we could blow the opportunity and let smugglers develop counter-measures.
Faced with a sudden rise in distribution costs, smugglers patiently developed alternative routes that were independent of the legal traffic. Instead of simply waiting and hoping for the ban in ivory to be lifted, new routes and new markets were developed p49-50
In a not very prescient observation, I noted that shipping containers were starting to be used to smuggle poached ivory. In December last year a shipment of 24 tonnes[2] was found in two such containers by Malaysian customs. Shipping containers are being interdicted that have ivory concealed in them. This is probably a function of the bulky nature of tusks. You need some way of moving a lot to make it economic.
Anyway, this is what we have seen happen. New routes have developed. New markets, especially in South East Asia and China have grown.
…Simple policy measures may work for a time but they end up being circumvented. Regulations rearrange costs and have flow-through effects to final markets. These market spill-overs spur participants to circumvent these costs …
The poaching crisis for elephants is now recognised to be as extreme as the 1980s.
I don't think my book chapter was very wide off the mark.
—-
[1] Moyle, B. (2003). Regulation, conservation and incentives. In Oldfield, S. (ed). The Trade in Wildlife: Regulation for Conservation, Earthscan Publications Ltd., London & Sterling, VA. Pp. 41-51.
[2] This news item also employs the popular and erroneous urban myth that the trade in wildlife is about Traditional Chinese Medicines.
How to write a news report on Wildlife Poaching Nov 07
No CommentsAfter reading many of these over the years, I believe I have discerned the formula for writing the successful news report on wildlife poaching. This is all that it takes:
1) Always support the trade-ban. Trade bans are always the right thing to do. They are a brilliant conservation strategy that creates much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the actual black-markets. Removing legal competition, inflating prices and creating a niche for organised crime always discourages poaching. Because everyone knows that bloating the profits of crime syndicates through a ban, is the last thing these guys want. Rhinos have been subject to an international trade-ban since 1977. Don't question its effectiveness. Making criminals rich has got to deter poaching eventually.
2) Tantalise and shock the reader. Everyone needs to be told that wildlife is poached for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). And TCM is only ever used for one thing of course- aphrodisiacs. Readers love being told this stuff. On no account should you actually tell the readers that wildlife is poached for a myriad of reasons and it is almost always, has nothing to do with aphrodisiacs.
3) Call for more law enforcement. Obviously nobody has since say, 1977 for rhinos, ever thought of this before. The shoot-to-kill policy adopted towards some poachers in African states is just us being soft towards poaching. What we need to do is 'more'. Whatever that means.
4) Call for more education. Anti-consumption 'education' campaigns have been running in many Asian countries since the 1990s. We're not entirely sure where the consumers are or what their motives are, so broach-brush approaches are being used. Because nothing kills off demand faster than the constant reminder to people that the wildlife products have medicinal properties in their culture.
5) Make proposals to reduce value of the wildlife. For example, dehorning rhinos was started in the late 1980s as a way to discourage poachers. With barely any horn left, poachers would have little desire to hunt the rhinos. We've been waiting for this to work for two decades of course.
6) Mock anyone who expresses doubt. The trade-ban is the corner-stone of a brilliant conservation strategy. The collapse of rhino numbers due to poaching, the extinction of the Western Black subspecies, the loss of all wild rhinos in Vietnam- are all utterly minor setbacks. Anyone who wonders if we should be considering legal trade isn't a "true" conservationist. They're in the pay of the Chinese or the hunting fraternity or something. The trade-ban is brilliant so there's nothing to debate. We just need to spend more money on doing what's been failing for over 30 years.
(Sorry, I'm in a slightly dark mood)
#Tiger woes Jul 04
No CommentsThe recent Stuff news article on the dwindling kea numbers brought up the comparison with the tiger. Keas (a native parrot) have dwindled and the keen conservationists trying to avert this, point out that they get a lot less money than tigers.
Kea
This isn't really a great revelation because, well, nothing gets more money than the tiger. And sadly, tiger conservation has been one of the most conspicuous conservation failures we have. With tigers we seem doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, largely because of the 'feel good' factor. We use reserves, trade bans and anti-poaching measures, but never try to understand how these black-markets work. Then when the policy fails- perhaps because there are all kinds of perverse effects that make these bans counter-productive- we just decide to do the same thing year after year, but with more money.
And every year, we have less and less tigers. So the blame game begins. Apparently if we decide to use a conservation strategy that makes tigers worth $US50,000 to Asian criminals, we shouldn't expect them to take advantage of it. When your basic conservation strategy to save tigers is to make Asian criminals rich if they push them to extinction, maybe we should be rethinking the whole logic being used here.
To the sea! Coastal #Bird Album May 25
No CommentsI've done some updating of various photo albums on my zenfolio website. One of the ones that's had a makeover is the 'Coastal Birds" album. The intent of these makeovers is to just keep some good representative shots on public view, and move a lot of the less optimal photos into storage. This album has white-faced herons, royal spoonbills, pied stilts and the endangered NZ dotterel. 
