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10 Crime Sci. 1 (2021)

handle is hein.journals/crimsci10 and id is 1 raw text is: Del pech et a. Crime Sci  (2021) 10:1
https-//doi.org/10.1186/s40163-020-00138-1

Crime Science

Systematic review of situational prevention
methods for crime against species
Dorothea Delpech , Herve Borrion and Shane Johnson
Abstract
Illegal activities concerning terrestrial species (TS) are responsible for a variety of health, environmental, economic
and security issues. The majority of academic research associated with species relates to conservation, with few
publications specihcally investigating the scale of crimes impacting species or how they can be prevented. This article
systematically reviews the available evidence about what works to prevent crime against terrestrial species. Of over
29,000 documents that were returned in the first stage of the review, these were fhltered to just over 100. The remain-
ing documents were partially or fully read to identify the most relevant documents to include in the final qualitative
synthesis. The review results show there is a signifcant lack of primary research in this area, as only five articles were
found that met the study inclusion criteria.The identifed articles focus on the effects of two types of situational crime
prevention interventions: community outreach and ranger patrol frequency. Community outreach was shown to have
a signifcant impact on local poaching levels, while for patrolling the evidence suggests a positive impact on the dis-
covery of poachers, animal carcasses and poaching paraphernalia, however, the quality of these studies varied greatly.
To prevent the further decline of species numbers internationally, more effort should be invested in publicising exist-
ing research into the effectiveness of prevention strategies that have not reached the wider scientifc audience, as
well as the funding and promotion of research into alternate methods of crime prevention.
Keywords: Livestock, Wildlife, Crime, Poaching, Systematic Review, Patrols, Community Outreach

Background
The illicit exploitation of flora and fauna has a variety
of negative impacts internationally including threats to
health security (e.g. disease spreading, improper prepara-
tion of meat), national security (e.g. terrorism financing
through illicit trade in species), environmental security
(e.g. animal population decline and possible extinctions)
and the economy (e.g. costs associated to the damage and
removal of natural capital). In addition to the anthro-
pocentric impacts described above, there is an increas-
ing acknowledgement in the scientific literature and law
of the direct impact of crimes on the species as sentient
beings that can feel pain and suffering (Nurse 2016; Sol-
lund 2016; Blattner 2019).
*Crrespondence: dotdelpech@gmalcom
Department of Securty & Crime Scence, University College London
(UCL), 35 Tavistock Square, London WC1 H 9EZ, UK

BMC

In 2014, the illicit trade in wild flora and fauna was esti-
mated to be worth US$7-23 billion internationally, in
combination with other forms of environmental crime
(Nellemann et al. 2014). However, the 'dark figure' of
wildlife crime (i.e. unreported/undetected offenses), and
difficulty in attributing a 'value' to natural capital, makes
accurately estimating the total global costs of such crimes
challenging. A recent publication by the World Bank
aimed to account for the financial and economic value of
these natural assets. Montero et al. (2019) estimated that
when combining the economic and financial values of
these resources, the actual cost of the illicit trade in flora
and fauna has a global economic value of between US$1
and US$2 trillion per year.
Contrary to popular belief, the targets of crime are not
limited to exotic and iconic species, such as elephants
and tigers, but also include farmed produce including
livestock and crops (e.g. livestock theft/rustling, sheep

©The Author(s) 2021 This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing,
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