Five reasons people buy illegal wildlife products – and how to stop them
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Five reasons people buy illegal wildlife products – and how to stop them
Laura Thomas-Walters, University of Stirling; Amy Hinsley, University of Oxford, and Diogo Veríssimo, University of Oxford
A British tourist on a tropical beach poses for a photo with a cute monkey-like animal. A Vietnamese man buys some rhino-horn powder and brags to his friends about its potency. An orchid collector admires their latest purchase, a stunning bright-pink flower, without worrying too much about where it came from.
These are very three different people, from different parts of the world. But what they all have in common is they are driving – sometimes unwittingly, often not – the illegal wildlife trade. This trade is one of the largest and most lucrative international crimes and poses a major danger to both wild populations and our own health. The complexity of the trade, which involves thousands of species sold for diverse purposes worldwide, can be a barrier to conservationists trying to desig...
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