When Human-Wildlife Conflict Turns Deadly: Comparing the Situational Factors That Drive Retaliatory Leopard Killings in South Africa.

Retaliatory killings caused by human-wildlife conflict have a significant impact on the survival of leopards. This study explores the reasons for retaliatory killings of leopards by interviewing community members in a small village in South Africa that experienced high incidences of human-leopard conflict. The semi-structured interviews focused on the reasons why retaliatory leopard killings occurred and how to best mitigate the situational factors that triggered these killings. Respondents cited four main problems that fueled these killings: the government's response to human-leopard conflict was slow and unwilling; this response involved inefficient methods; there were inadequate resources to respond to these killings; and there was a clear lack of laws or their application. Local stakeholders provided a range of innovative strategies to reduce human-leopard conflict and retaliatory killings. While all parties expressed different reasons why these solutions were or were not effective, their conclusions were often similar. The distrust that existed between the parties prevented them from recognizing or accepting their common ground. Based on existing human-wildlife conflict mitigation techniques and solutions identified by local stakeholders, this article explores how criminological techniques, including situational crime prevention, can help identify and frame effective interventions to reduce the number of illegal leopard killings driven by human-wildlife conflict.

Using crime script analysis to understand wildlife poaching in Vietnam.

Poaching can contribute to the failure of biodiversity conservation efforts and inflict diverse harms on human livelihoods. We applied crime script analysis to the case of snare poaching-an illegal hunting activity-in three Vietnamese protected areas. Our goal was to enhance the understanding about the opportunity structure underlying snare poaching to advance the suite of community-based crime prevention activities. We analyzed crime scripts for three types of poachers across nine stages of the poaching process using expert-based elicitation with 13 workshop participants in Vinh, Vietnam, 2018. Five stages were similar, clustered toward the early stages, and two were different, clustered around middle crime stages. Analysis produced systematic crime-specific insight about the procedural aspects and requirements for poaching from preparation to hunt to selling one's catch. Stages identify multiple entry points to apply prevention techniques and match techniques with different types of snare poaching or poachers. Although this research focused on protected areas, the interdisciplinary approach applied herein may be adapted to other conservation contexts.