The Wildlife Farming Debate

A Tiger-skin rug captured by Anti-poaching authorities
Source: bringbackbigcats.wordpress.com

Poaching and the illegal wildlife trade seem to be unstoppable.  We live in a modern society that is more environmentally conscious than any preceding generation, yet endangered and threatened animals continue to be decimated by the wants and whims of an international market.  Conservationists and law makers are now looking to implement creative approaches to fight the ever-growing illicit industry.  One such approach that has been disputatious is legal wildlife farming.  Many cringe at the mention of those three words put together and dismiss the practice as unethical and unthinkable.  Yet some are suggesting that this bold idea may be the only realistic way to cut at the demand that fuels the poaching business.

$270 Million in Ivory
Source: The BBC

The Losing Fight Against Illegal Wildlife Trading

I will make the assumption, because you are reading this blog, that you are environmentally conscious.  Thus I will also make the assumption that you have, at one time, read an article that described the horrors and atrocities that are committed by poachers.  These articles are vivid, disturbing, and, most importantly, numerous.  Nonetheless, the illegal wildlife trade continues to be a huge business; some estimates put the annual revenue as high as 20 billion U.S. dollars.  This enormous yield is due to a high demand for wildlife products.  The constantly growing demand has decimated animal populations.  In the past century, 97% of wild tigers have disappeared due to the market for their skin and bones (Check, 2006).  Pangolins have suffered a 94% decrease in China (Pietersen et al. 2014) and Rhinos, who have been the subject of many an environmental crusade, have suffered a worldwide decline of 87% in only the last 17 years and poaching efforts have doubled in the last five (Ayling, 2012).  It is obvious that raising awareness has not done enough and that concrete action must be implemented.  Unfortunately, what steps the powers-that-be have undertaken have proven inadequate.

The international community's major reaction to this crisis has been to increase regulations and enforcement.  This response is exemplified by the passing of the International Convention on Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES).  This set of regulations and trade bans was entered into force in 1975, has been signed by 183 countries, and currently regulates the trade of over 35,000 species of plants and animals.  While impressively large, CITES has only been a success in two arenas, increasing community involvement in protecting native species and regulating legal trade.  It has proven ineffective against the juggernaut that is the illegal wildlife market.

Recently, Daniel Challender and Douglas MacMillian published an article in Conservation Letters titled, "Poaching is More Than an Enforcement Problem".  This article examined the current progress against poaching and the wildlife trade and declared it lacking.  They sum up what is fundamentally wrong with the current battle-plan by warning that,

Focusing principally on enforcement and anti-poaching measures, or the metaphorical "war on poaching"... risks making the same mistakes as the "war on drugs" approach, which failed despite increasing enforcement effort, as it is typically grounded in ethical concerns and western perceptions of the killings of animals, rather than an adequate understanding of the real drivers of poaching and illegal trade

Regulatory approaches are being overwhelmed by the drivers of poaching and trade, financial incentives for poaching are increasing due to rising prices and growing relative poverty between areas of supply and centers of demand, and aggressive enforcement of trade controls, in particular bans, can increase profits and lead to the involvement of organized criminals with the capacity to operate even under increased enforcement effort. 

The international effort is failing because poaching and trading are extremely lucrative.  The risks are low and the gains are extremely high.  For example, a recent arrest in China of a smuggler, who participated in the illegal Pangolin trade, resulted in a fine of 75,000 USD.  But, a single Pangolin can go for as much as $170,000.  The smuggler paid the fine, in cash, and was released hours after their arrest.

A New Approach

Despite it being a black market, the wildlife trade is still a market and under the power of the laws of economics.  Some conservationists have wisely suggested utilizing economic instruments to strike back, and one proposed instrument that has garnered a lot of controversy is wildlife farming.  Wildlife farming is the legal cultivation and trade in wildlife products in order to increase the supply available to the market and thus lower the potential gains of illegal poachers and traders.

To many conservationists and animal lovers, wildlife farming is incredibly unethical.  To successfully implement the practice, many wild species will be forced to live in artificial conditions that are not conducive with their natural state of being.   However, the fight against poaching and illegal trading is a desperate one and some, like Daniel Challender and Douglas MacMillian, believe that wildlife farming is a necessary evil.  Although our emotions tell us otherwise, the only way to solve this problem may be to sideline these ethical concerns and tackle this problem analytically and economically.

So if wildlife farming is put into action, does this mean that all wild animals will be in danger of becoming livestock?  No, wildlife farming would only be effective in specific situations when precise criteria are met.  This was the conclusion of another article, "Under What Circumstances can Wildlife Farming Benefit Species Conservation?" by Laura Tensen published in Global Ecology and Conservation.  Tensen's final diagnosis of the potential of Wildlife Farming was as follows:

Wildlife farming can benefit species conservation only if the following criteria are met: (i) the legal products will form a substitute, and consumers show no preference for wild-caught animals; (ii) a substantial part of the demand is met, and the demand does not increase due to the legalized market; (iii) the legal products will be more cost-efficient, in order to combat the black-market prices; (iv) wildlife farming does not rely on wildlife populations for restocking; (v) laundering of illegal products into the commercial trade is absent.

The preceding requirements are not surprising but what is surprising is how hard it may be to acheive them.  For example, legal farming may not be able to meet demand by increasing supply.  There are already farming initiatives for musk deer and elephants, yet demand for both those species is still increasing.  Even worse, farming may cause the dangerous Stigma Effect to occur, in which legal farming would remove the negative attitude towards the consumption of wildlife products and thus increase demand.  It is also uncertain whether consumers will prefer farmed products, especially in holistic and spiritual markets where wild products are perceived as having greater "spiritual" value.  Another area where farming may not be able to keep up with poaching is low costs; for example, the a kilogram of farmed tiger bones is 50%-300% more expensive than the same amount collected by poaching.  Tensen rounds out her fears about the viability of wildlife farming by saying that if any laundering of illegal products occurs, as in if any illegally collected products infiltrate the legal market, then there will be no chance for a positive influence on conservation efforts.

Despite her many concerns, Tensen did promote some hope for wildlife farming.  She believes that wildlife farming could be especially effective for extremely threatened animals because the demand for such products is only influenced by their scarcity.  Certain consumers, especially those looking for pets from the wildlife trade, will probably prefer farmed animals because of their better health and quality.  Also some animals may be able to survive in artificial conditions quite well and their costs may turn out to be low.  And with the question of laundering, the invention of better enforcement procedures, like modern tagging systems, may ensure that illegal products are detected before they enter any legal markets.

Rhinos, whose horns have been harmlessly and legally cut off for sale, on a farm in South Africa
Source: Caters News Agency

My Own Two Cents   

In a perfect world, wildlife farming would not even be a subject for discussion because it is an unethical practice that wild animals should not be subjected to.  To force them into artificial and human-dominated environments, such as farms, would be subjecting them to a stressful and cruel existence.  However, we do not live in a perfect world.  Too many species of animals that have long thrived on Earth are disappearing because people like to wear trinkets made from their bones.  The strict regulations that we have enacted to extinguish our collective conscience have all but failed to stop the market-driven rape of these precious species.  Thus we must explore the unattractive and unethical alternatives to solving this crisis.

Daniel Challender and Douglas MacMillian expressed it perfectly when they told their audience that,

 As more realistic approaches are beginning to emerge to tackle other international crimes such as drug trafficking, it is imperative that conservationists stop promoting regulation as the only solution because it reflects their own personal beliefs about animal welfare and exploitation and instead focus more on policies and strategies that reduce the price of illegal wildlife products and increase the opportunity costs of poaching by contributing to the eradication of rural poverty.  

Instead of pushing for policy that makes us feel better, we have to push for the policies that will actually make a difference.  When the crisis is averted and population numbers are up, then we can talk about how we want to interact with the greater wild world.

Thus I am for wildlife farming, but I also believe that we should be incredibly selective about which products and species we allow to be farmed.  In his own article about the possibility of wildlife farming, Richard Conniff brought up the example of brush-tailed porcupine, which had been farmed in an attempt in West Africa.  Unfortunately for the effort, those animals are immensely solitary and, when they were put in close proximity to each other, fought almost constantly and refused to breed.  A simple behavioral study would have found that this venture would not succeed.  Some species may meet the requirements set forth by Laura Tensen and will benefit greatly from being farmed, but for most species it may not be an viable option.

Despite its promise, wildlife farming is a temporary solution.  At best, it will only buy threatened species time while the world searches for a permanent answer.  Looking forward, the only way that this challenge will truly be solved is through education.  While much of the world has begun to realize that nature was not created to bend to man's whim, some have not yet come to that conclusion.  While many people think that the animals and plants that have evolved to live on this great ecosystem are all precious and deserving of existence, others think of them only as resources to be exploited.  Conservationists must no longer seek to impart their own beliefs on others through regulations and legal statutes, they must aspire to proselyte others towards a mindset on nature that is sustainable.

If tigers are truly going to be saved, then we must teach others that it is not acceptable to harvest their bones for wine.  If elephants are to rebound, then we must all move away from ivory jewelry and adornments.  If we want poachers to stop hunting our rare animals, then we must stop perceiving the products made from them as status symbols.  These changes to deep-rooted cultural desires will not happen quickly, they will occur slowly and gradually.  In the meantime, desperate and unpopular measures like wildlife farming may keep wild populations afloat enough to see the new world that we are striving for.