The species dilemma and its potential impact on enforcing wildlife trade laws

Abstract

The varied answers to the question “What is a species?” provoke more than lively debates in academic circles. They pose practical problems for law enforcement. Commercial wildlife trade threatens many primate species and is regulated through such laws and international agreements as the U.S. Endangered Species Act and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. Enforcing legislation relies on the ability to identify when violations occur. Species‐defining characters may not be preserved in wildlife trade items. For example, pelage patterns and behavioral characters (e.g., vocalizations) are absent from skulls. Accordingly, identifying victims of illegal trade can be difficult, which hinders enforcement. Moreover, identifying new species and “splitting” of currently recognized species can result in enforcement lags and regulatory loopholes. Although such negative consequences should not hinder scientific advancement, we suggest that they be considered by primate taxonomists and provide recommendations to prevent unintended conservation consequences.

Leveraging palaeoproteomics to address conservation and restoration agendas

“…The international trade in wildlife and wildlife-derived products includes a considerable number of illicitly traded materials originating from endangered species ( Galimberti et al., 2015 ). Many specimens that are illicitly traded are heavily processed or consist only of fragmentary remains ( Jacobs and Baker, 2018 ) and are thus difficult to identify based on morphology alone. DNA-based methods are already being used to identify wildlife products ( Eaton et al., 2010 ; Galimberti et al., 2015 ; Jacobs and Baker, 2018 ).…”

“…Many specimens that are illicitly traded are heavily processed or consist only of fragmentary remains ( Jacobs and Baker, 2018 ) and are thus difficult to identify based on morphology alone. DNA-based methods are already being used to identify wildlife products ( Eaton et al., 2010 ; Galimberti et al., 2015 ; Jacobs and Baker, 2018 ). However, proteomic approaches offer a quicker and cheaper means to identify these specimens and thus have the potential to aid the identification of illegally traded materials in resource and funding-limited contexts.…”

Combining Machine Learning & Reasoning for Biodiversity Data Intelligence

“…(Minin et al 2019;Olschofsky and Köhl 2020). By leveraging such monitoring-focused datasets and publicly available museum or citizen science data, our ap-proach has the potential to add the further step of learning relationships between names and concepts across taxonomies, filling an important gap for the detection of illegal trade under a dynamic patchwork of inter-/national legal regimes (Jacobs and Baker 2018). One benefit of learning taxonomic alignments is that we gain the ability to reason about whether an organism is protected under different legal frameworks in scenarios where it has been identified manually, with or without image data, and where manual identification is missing but image (or potentially other) data sources are available.…”

Changes in nomenclature of animals included in Lists of Wild Animals under Special State Protection in China and impacts on wildlife conservation

“…者亚种提升为种的物种, 并依此提出了应该被包含在 《名录》中的物种名单 [57] . 但既然以整目、整科或整 属列入类群, 新增物种, 无论是拆分、新发现种还是 新记录, 都应自动获得保护地位, 包括鹦形目、鸮形 目、鹰形目、叶猴属、金丝猴属、红珊瑚属和彩臂金 龟属等, 如拆分的红脚隼(Falco amurensis)和西红脚隼 (F. vespertinus)等多个物种 [58] . 那么, 以单种形式列入 [57] .…”