Conserving wildlife through trading wildlife

The trade in ivory is banned to protect elephants. The trade in horn is banned to protect rhinos. The import of hunting trophies is banned to protected hunted species. But what if these trade bans are not working and trading wildlife is actually the way to conserve it? Though the Global Biodiversity Framework, international policy makers recognise that we should ensure that the harvesting and trade of wild species is sustainable, legal, and beneficial to people. Could liberalised markets for wildlife-based goods and services be the way to conserve wildlife? This talk will explore the increasingly popular concept of a wildlife economy and also reflect a bit on the place of the wild in classical economic thought.

Speaker

Dr Francis Vorhies is a conservation economist and most recently has been the founding director of the African Wildlife Economy Institute at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. After completing his economics doctorate at the University of Colorado with a thesis on the monetary theories of Karl Marx and Ludwig von Mises, his attention turned to the opportunities to conserve nature by privatising it. He has also been a resident economist at the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at the University of Oxford.