I was delivering a guest lecture in 2021, discussing the challenges of countering the illegal wildlife trade due to the power of the criminal networks and the elite interests involved, and the limited resources available to CIWT organizations. After discussing the role of corruption in enabling IWT in both a national and international context, we moved to audience questions. A man raised his hand and asked why we couldn't just agree to pay the president of a country $1 million each year if they stopped poaching within their borders. His argument was that if elites benefited economically from conservation, they would stop the corruption enabling the trade and use national law enforcement to clamp down on IWT networks, bringing the trade to the end in a simple and cost-effective manner.

Although there are policy, ethical and practical challenges with such a policy, that argument struck a chord with me. Criminal networks are involved in the trade because it is low risk and lucrative; getting powerful interests to support conservation, and not IWT, would help change that. This chapter seeks to delve more deeply into that argument by examining how to break up the criminal networks driving high-value IWT, nationally and internationally. As such this chapter moves from the tactical, local level of “save the animal to kill the trade”, to the strategic national and international level. It considers how we might effectively counter these organized networks and their illicit financial flows. I examine efforts to apply existing models for countering financial crime to CIWT and the successes that has achieved. I emphasize the value of utilizing existing approaches from outside of the sector, backed up with the resources and experienced specialists to deliver them. In particular I explore what we can learn from counterinsurgency techniques. I argue that CIWT is similar to a low-intensity counterinsurgency environment, where disillusioned local populations support poachers (insurgents) against the rangers (the government). Drawing on British Army procedures, I show how best-practice counterinsurgency approaches share lessons for CIWT through their focus on winning the support of the human terrain (the local population) and a limited, highly-targeted law-enforcement effort against the highest levels in an insurgent (poacher) group.

As a ranger in Kahuzi-Biega National Park, John Kahekwa was concerned to see members of the community he had grown up in arrested for poaching. When he asked a man why he had done it, the man replied, “Empty stomachs have no ears”. With no way to make a living, the man entered the park to trap bushmeat to sell and to feed his family. When asked if he would stop poaching if he had a job, the man replied, “Yes, of course!”. John went on to set up the Pole Pole Foundation and that man and several other former poachers were trained to become carvers of wooden souvenirs to sell to tourists, turning them from poachers into protectors, and it kicked started a three-decades-long effort to work with communities to deliver gorilla conservation.

This anecdote gets to the heart of both conservation's problem and its solution. Too many people living around national parks and protected ecosystems live in poverty and are dependent on natural resources for their survival, be that charcoal for cooking or bushmeat for food. With few jobs available, the only way to secure an income is to illegally poach wildlife or exploit timber. There is often no malice involved or the pursuit of great riches, it is simply about supporting their families in the only way they can. It is the reality of “poverty poaching”.

Filling empty stomachs is therefore key to ending poverty poaching. Poaching is an awful activity to be involved in, something only those with no other choice would do. Wild areas are dangerous places and difficult to navigate. All sorts of animals, reptiles and insects can kill you. I heard one story of a bushmeat hunter in Zambia carrying freshly captured carcasses out of the park who was attacked by a male lion seeking out an easy lunch; the man would have died if he had not received urgent medical help. Trudging through forests or over savannahs in search of game or timber and then hauling it long distances is back-breaking work and does not pay well. Add to that the risk of arrest by rangers and we can see why poverty poaching is such a miserable occupation, and why the man John spoke to was so keen to take that job.

Happy Kasonde, a Wildlife Police Officer (a Zambian ranger) was escorting a school group in Kafue National Park when they came across a herd of elephants. When he thought the herd had gone past, he allowed the children out of the bus to have a closer look at the herd walking off into the distance. He hadn't seen that there was a baby calf among the herd, not far from the bus. Elephant poaching is rife in Kafue, so the elephants can be more hostile than they are in many other parks. The mother thought her calf was in danger and became very aggressive towards the group of children. He realized the danger, made sure that the children were all safely back on the bus, and then drew the elephant mother away. Despite firing warning shots to try and scare the elephant away, she attacked him and he died of his injuries.

On average three rangers are killed each week, part of the “thin green line”. The story above is just one illustration of the dangers they face; it is not just heavily armed gangs of poachers that threaten their lives, but the game, many of it dangerous, in the Parks in which they operate. Wildlife cannot always tell the difference between poacher and protector. Beyond rangers, there is also the wider threat to environmentalists, often overlooked. The corruption and illicit economies associated with IWT have led to the murder of many activists, particularly in South America, as well as ambushes of key personnel, such as the killing of Chingeta Wildlife NGO's CEO Rory Young in Burkina Faso and the ambush of Emmanuel de Merode in the Virunga region of the DRC to name two well-known examples.

We ask rangers to endure these dangers in order to protect wildlife and habitats, yet their compensation is often poor. Low salaries, poor equipment, a lack of specialized training, for example, “combat medic” skills needed to deal with gunshot or puncture wounds, a lack of weapons and ammunition to protect themselves, and a lack of suitable transport to get in and out of where they need to be, all make their job very challenging.

It is far easier to make money exploiting the environment than it is protecting it. It is that basic insight that is at the heart of the strategy set out in this book to help bring the global illegal wildlife trade to an end.

I’ve worked with John Kahekwa and his team in the Pole Pole Foundation (or POPOF for short) for over a decade. As a multi-award-winning conservation charity and Earthshot Prize finalist working in one of the toughest countries on earth, they are at the sharp end of conservation and have seen it all. John started his career as a ranger protecting and habituating gorillas in Kahuzi-Biega National Park where in the 1980s he took tourists to visit them, including Al Gore and Bill Gates, while also helping with the filming of Gorillas in the Mist. After using a ten dollar tip to launch a successful souvenir business, he launched the Pole Pole Foundation in 1992 to give back to the community and to further protect the critically endangered gorillas. Since then he and his family have experienced the horrors of what has been termed “Africa's World War”, which is estimated to have caused around 5 million deaths, and killed 80–90 per cent of the Grauer's gorillas that he works to protect. In the chapters that follow I have sought to combine the insights gained from working with John and his team with the work of other researchers and practitioners, including those focused on global demand reduction and countering international organized crime, to develop an effective strategy to counter the illegal wildlife trade (IWT).

A lot of people I come across in my work, including some on the frontline of conservation, do not think that IWT can be stopped and that the current “fire-fighting” approach is all that can be realistically achieved in the face of what seem overwhelming odds. Anyone who watches the news can understand their point of view, but the outlook is not all negative. Progress has been made.

I have worked in the conservation field for almost 15 years and have found broadly the same problems faced across the sector. Most of my experience is in Africa, especially east and southern Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), including my work with the multi-award winning conservation NGO and Earthshot Prize finalist the Pole Pole Foundation to develop a blueprint for national park conservation. However during my doctoral research I have worked with many organizations from other parts of the world and have seen and heard the same problems arising. This book is the result: a strategy developed from the practices that I have found to deliver effective results, combined with learning from projects that have been unsuccessful. Although some readers may feel that there is not much new in this book, I hope the synthesis of a large body of knowledge from the sector into a simplified set of insights and, most importantly, a workable strategy to help bring an end to the illegal wildlife trade, will be welcomed.

I have primarily worked with military and commercial organizations, where the approach is to understand a problem, develop an effective and cost-efficient strategy to solve it, and then task and support well-trained people to deliver that strategy on the ground and in so doing, adapt and overcome the specific challenges faced in that process. This book is designed to be just such a strategic handrail, but it necessarily relies on people being able to execute the strategy effectively. For example, law enforcement requires trained and experienced professionals to be successful, and monetizing nature requires commercially minded people to execute business models, raise revenue, and deliver high-quality products that appeal to the market.

It is this alignment of people and strategy that is key to success in the real world and it is where the environmental sector has often struggled. There are some phenomenal people working in conservation, often at great personal risk, who are poorly paid and under-resourced. Without them the situation would be a great deal worse, but too much of their work is fire-fighting.

This chapter sets out an imagined example of what the SWIPRO strategy could look like when executed in the real world. As I have outlined, the SWIPRO approach addresses the underlying causes of IWT, chiefly by developing business solutions to solve the economic equation. Those businesses then provide the funds to pay for enhanced law enforcement and community support in and around protected areas to solve the poacher's equation and, at the national and global level, to support efforts to break criminal networks through financial investigations and to help deliver a commercial approach to reduce IWT demand through substitution. I believe the SWIPRO strategy offers the most effective and workable solution to bring IWT to an end.

In the sections below I set out a fictional protected area to show how the SWIPRO strategy can best be applied in different contexts. I also provide some imagined solutions to break networks and for products and campaigns to reduce IWT demand through substitution. Not all of these ideas will necessarily work in the real world exactly as set out in this chapter, but the intent is to show what could be delivered to provide inspiration to those with the motivation and capability to make such ideas happen.

THE NATIONAL PARK (TNP)

TNP is an imagined protected area with good road transport links to the country's main city which contains both a maritime port and an international airport. Surrounding TNP live local communities facing high levels of poverty, a lack of education and health facilities and a 20 per cent child malnutrition rate. TNP contains the “Big 5” game – lions, leopards, buffalo, elephants and rhinos – as well as a host of other mammals, birds and reptiles, including pangolins. Organized criminal networks operate in TNP, recruiting members of the local community to support experienced poachers to kill rhinos and elephants, and paying poachers in the local community for big cat skins and bones, and captured pangolins. High levels of poaching have led to population declines in all the key species in TNP, so the wildlife authority and conservation NGOs operating in and around the park have asked for outside support to help them implement the SWIPRO strategy. That support began five years ago, and the results are set out below.

I was speaking to a well-respected Zambian wildlife police officer (ranger) working in Kafue National Park in Zambia to find out more about the poaching situation in the park. After he had outlined the problems they were having, I asked if poaching continued throughout the year and in all areas of the park. He said there was no poaching on the western edge of the park in July and August. This was the time of the tobacco harvest, which created a lot of local employment, removing the need and the time to poach. Although not a perfect example of a business solution to CIWT – some of the tobacco farms were encroaching on the game management areas and there was no link between the tobacco companies and conservation – that example, especially the ranger's remark that they had neither the need nor the time to poach has remained with me.

The central argument of this chapter is that generating revenue from diversified business models associated with conservation at the tactical level is the lynchpin for success in CIWT (we shall examine the strategic level in Chapter 6 on demand reduction). The more revenue that protected areas can generate, the stronger the justification for conservation and the more success is likely to be achieved: “if it pays it stays”. That increased revenue creates powerful economic interests for protection over exploitation, flipping the economic equation on its head as conservation becomes a profitable activity instead of a cost, and more money can be generated from conservation than illegal exploitation.

I believe that the most effective business models are those that offer protection, income and employment for protected areas and the communities living around them. Protection comes in the form of physical barriers to entry for potential poachers, the security provided by the businesses themselves, and the deterrent effect of strong economic interests tied to conservation. Income relates to how much revenue can be generated by businesses associated with conservation, both to make the economic case that protection can compete and win on commercial terms over exploitation, and to provide finance for the other elements of SWIPRO through revenue shares to organizations delivering CIWT activity. Employment directly addresses the poacher's equation by removing the need to poach and winning the support of local communities.

Frederick the Great of Prussia was concerned about the risk of famine due to the dependence of the population on wheat as their main source of carbohydrates. He wanted to diversify away from this monocrop by getting peasant farmers to grow potatoes. However, despite his best efforts to force the new crop on his subjects, he failed; Prussian peasants said that potatoes tasted so horrible that not even dogs would eat them. So he tried a different tack, declaring the potato to be a royal vegetable, only to be grown within the palace grounds and guarded night and day by armed soldiers. Secretly, however, the soldiers were told not to do a very good job. Sure enough, as word spread about the exclusive new royal vegetable, thieves entered the grounds to steal the potatoes, a black market soon emerged, and farmers all over Prussia started to grow the new crop.

I enjoy this story because it shows what can be achieved by the clever use of psychology in marketing, and that the obvious way to achieve a goal is not always the most effective. It is this type of behavioural approach that could be utilized to weaken demand for IWT products. The approach also helps us to better understand what underpins demand for IWT products. For example, as discussed in previous chapters, rhino horn is now more valuable than gold. This is not just as a result of scarcity and market forces, or demand for its medicinal properties (it has none), but because it has become a symbol of conspicuous consumption; a recent trend among Vietnamese millionaires is to have rhino horn ground into expensive cocktails.

Such cultural trends can emerge quite suddenly and unpredictably, leading to increases in poaching and the trade in a particular species, and they can be difficult to identify; it can take time to notice sustained increases in exploitation and trading of individual species, and often by the time the increase is identified, the damage to the species is already severe, as we saw in Chapter 1. The current approach to demand reduction then requires grant applications to be completed and campaigns to be developed to raise the profile of the species involved, which takes time, all the while the species is being lost.

As part of my Masters degree I had to undertake an internship in a region of armed conflict or post-conflict, working with a relevant NGO on the topic of my dissertation. I wanted to examine the linkages between conservation and postwar recovery, and was fortunate to get the chance to work in eastern DRC and Rwanda. One of the projects being run by the NGO that I interned with was a honey cooperative. They were working with local communities to develop a social enterprise to produce and sell honey in nearby markets, to create employment and income to stop poaching.

The idea was sound, but the execution epitomized why CIWT approaches have yet to scale and bring an end to the trade. A Ugandan member of the team, with no commercial background, was trying to teach members of the Rwandan local community, via a translator, how to develop a business model to produce, process, transport and sell their honey. I bought a pot of honey back home with me and ran some taste tests with friends and family, all of whom were impressed by the quality. Here was a product – “gorilla-friendly” honey – that tasted great and could potentially have built a strong brand, but it was going nowhere. That was my first experience of how important it is to get the right people involved, and it was the first time I saw the potential to scale existing conservation projects to deliver a commercial solution. There is some great work in the CIWT space, but without a shift in strategy that will enable that work to significantly expand its impact, the trade is unlikely to end. It echoes a point made by John and his POPOF team in the DRC; they know what is needed to stop poaching, but they don't know how to execute those ideas at the scale required to end poaching. You can have the greatest strategy in the world, but if you don't have the people or finance in place to execute it effectively, the chances of failure remain high.

I often wish that authors would provide a concise distillation of their book to refer back to after reading the whole tome. A short version, highlighting the key takeaways, can be a helpful rapid remind and revise and point the reader back to specific chapters to reread in more detail. I’ve tried to do that here.

The illegal wildlife trade (IWT) is estimated to be worth up to $20 billion per year and threatens the survival of thousands of species of flora and fauna. The trade is facilitated by organized criminal groups, many of which are involved in other illicit activities, utilizing the same networks and routes to move IWT products. IWT increases the risk of future pandemics due to the risk of zoonotic disease transfer from wildlife to humans, and also entrenches corruption throughout the supply chain.

The trade can be broken down into two component parts: the act of poaching, including the capture of live animals; and the subsequent trade in the wildlife products, such as ivory, from point of capture to point of sale. Most of the funds from IWT come at the point of sale, with poachers often receiving only a few cents on the dollar of the overall trade. This leads source countries and communities to lose the economic benefits from conservation and taxation of legal businesses, but it also offers an opportunity to intervene at the lowest level to stop poaching at source. I argue that these low-level interventions are the most effective interventions; “save the animal to kill the trade”.

To help understand what is driving the trade, I set out two frameworks: the economic equation and the poacher's equation. The economic equation identifies the asymmetry in the trade, with exploitation cheap and lucrative, while conservation is expensive and poorly-funded, leading organized criminal groups to view the trade as low-risk and high-reward. The poacher's equation focuses on why an individual or community would poach or not, setting the potential gain against the potential loss, divided by the perceived risk of getting caught. By solving both of these equations we can help bring an end to IWT.