1 - Introduction

Summary

We live in the midst of a nature crisis in which we face not only global warming, but also the serious loss of other species. The causes are anthropogenic, through which species are driven to extinction due to climate change, loss of habitat, hunting and wildlife trade. This represents a threat to ecosystems, to all living beings and therefore to the world as we know it. According to the last Living Planet index (WWF 2022), the world has suffered an average decline of 69 per cent in monitored species populations since 1970. This book addresses this crisis with results from research on the implementation and enforcement of two nature conservation conventions as a starting point, The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES, 1975), and the Council of Europe's Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats (the Bern Convention, 1979).

Species loss is usually regarded as a conservation issue, giving value to non-human animals only at aggregated species level, rather than recognizing their individual intrinsic value (Sollund 2019), a perspective that is reflected in the two conventions. As a result of the focus on species conservation, the harms and loss of life resulting from anthropogenic acts such as hunting and wildlife trades that affect individual animals, their flocks and families, are usually overlooked. While a considerable amount of research on conservation is taking place within the natural sciences, and despite a growing body of work within the social sciences, there is still a lack of literature that combines conservation studies with a focus on animal rights and welfare, and animals’ intrinsic value. This is an aim of this book, which is a fruit of the CRIMEANTHROP project; Criminal Justice, Wildlife Conservation and Animal Rights in the Anthropocene (2019– 23).

The CRIMEANTHROP project

This major research project, led by Ragnhild A. Sollund, ran for four years, from 2019 to 2023. It included case studies from the UK (by Tanya Wyatt), Spain (by Teresa Fajardo), Germany (by Christoph H. Stefes) and a larger study comprised of three case studies in Norway (by Ragnhild A. Sollund, David R. Goyes as a post-doctoral researcher, and PhD fellow Martine S.B. Lie). In this volume, the initial case studies have been added to by contributions from other scholars in order to cover human– wildlife relations more broadly and in other countries.