{"title":"Brushes with the Law: A Conservation Scientist’s Perspective on Legal Solutions and Impediments from Scottish Wildcats to African Lions*","authors":"D. Macdonald","doi":"10.1080/13880292.2019.1616379","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract I suggest here that the requirements for conservation evidence within regulation are cyclical in nature, and I describe the key stages in this cycle of conservation regulation. In particular, I focus on: (1) the type of evidence required (illustrated by the case of water voles disrupted by riverside development), (2) the clarity of evidence in terms of its implications for policy (illustrated by the harrowing case of the endangered Scottish wildcat hybridising with the pestilential feral domestic cat), (3) the actual impact such evidence has in practice (illustrated by the legal confusions arising from the changing taxonomy of protected species), and (4) the role of evidence in assessing regulatory efficacy (which returns us to point 1 in the cycle) (illustrated by evidence of the (in)humaneness of, for example, rodent traps, various instances of wildlife trade, and the efficacy of international conventions). The article concludes with a series of reflections on how conservation researchers might engage with legal experts and practitioners for the benefit of wildlife conservation in the twenty-first century: through transdisciplinary research, ethically informed and actively applied.","PeriodicalId":52446,"journal":{"name":"Journal of International Wildlife Law and Policy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2019-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"6","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of International Wildlife Law and Policy","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13880292.2019.1616379","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"Social Sciences","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 6
Abstract
Abstract I suggest here that the requirements for conservation evidence within regulation are cyclical in nature, and I describe the key stages in this cycle of conservation regulation. In particular, I focus on: (1) the type of evidence required (illustrated by the case of water voles disrupted by riverside development), (2) the clarity of evidence in terms of its implications for policy (illustrated by the harrowing case of the endangered Scottish wildcat hybridising with the pestilential feral domestic cat), (3) the actual impact such evidence has in practice (illustrated by the legal confusions arising from the changing taxonomy of protected species), and (4) the role of evidence in assessing regulatory efficacy (which returns us to point 1 in the cycle) (illustrated by evidence of the (in)humaneness of, for example, rodent traps, various instances of wildlife trade, and the efficacy of international conventions). The article concludes with a series of reflections on how conservation researchers might engage with legal experts and practitioners for the benefit of wildlife conservation in the twenty-first century: through transdisciplinary research, ethically informed and actively applied.
期刊介绍:
Drawing upon the findings from island biogeography studies, Norman Myers estimates that we are losing between 50-200 species per day, a rate 120,000 times greater than the background rate during prehistoric times. Worse still, the rate is accelerating rapidly. By the year 2000, we may have lost over one million species, counting back from three centuries ago when this trend began. By the middle of the next century, as many as one half of all species may face extinction. Moreover, our rapid destruction of critical ecosystems, such as tropical coral reefs, wetlands, estuaries, and rainforests may seriously impair species" regeneration, a process that has taken several million years after mass extinctions in the past.