Last week it so happened that the UK government hosted an international conference on illegal wildlife trade and we had decided to discuss Challender & MacMillan’s policy perspective “Poaching is more than an enforcement problem”. Most likely a topic that every conservation biologists have an opinion about.

Challender & MacMillan argue that enforcement will never be enough to combat poaching, and especially the trade in high-value species. Instead they stress the importance of getting locals on-board, using regulated trade to take down prices, and finally to reduce demand through social marketing programs. The authors stress that enforcement approaches cannot address the underlying drivers of poaching and illegal trade, and will therefore fail. Continue reading →

This year I decided to challenge myself and take part in a conference on development research instead of the usual conferences on conservation biology. Working on conservation issues in developing countries I sometimes feel that I fall right in between the disciplines of natural sciences and social sciences. I am a multidisciplinary outsider criticized from both sides. But it is no secret that my basic training in ecology has influenced me a lot. So here come the reflections of a conservation biologist on the 2^nd Nordic conference for development research held in Espoo, Helsinki (link).

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Time for an update on how the rainforests in Africa are doing? Have a look at the recent Phil Trans R Soc B theme issue on “Change in African rainforests: past, present and future” (link). Since some of us are working on analyzing deforestation rates and patterns we chose to read Mayaux et al.’s paper: “State and evolution of the African rainforests between 1990 and 2010” for our journal club discussion. Continue reading →