Evaluating the conservation outcomes of wildlife farming: Your help collecting case studies and grey

Some proposals have suggested that wildlife farming, including the cultivation domestication and ranching of wild plants and animals, can help to reduce consumer pressures on wild wildlife, and curtail the illegal wildlife trade.

While there are some examples to support these proposals, there are equally counter examples. In fact, the diverse conservation impacts of these "supply side" interventions remains uncertain. In 2009, Sutherland et al. identified 100 questions important to the conservation of global biodiversity. Question #59 asked, "Under what conditions is trade in captive or wild harvested species beneficial for wild populations of the traded species?" Wildlife farming remains a contentious issue, recently debated in Science, Conservation Letters, and also at the center of CITES and IUCN policy debates.

In collaboration with Benjamin Ho and Ted Webb at the National University of Singapore, and Madhu Rao at the Wildlife Conservation Society, we are reviewing the available published and unpublished literature, to better assess the diverse conservation impacts of wildlife farming on target species and habitats. This is crucial to strengthening the evidence-base for future trade policy decisions, including at CITES 17th Conference of Parties.

Critically, much of the information on wildlife farming remains unpublished.

How you can help

We are looking for relevant grey literature and case studies from organisations and institutions engaged in wildlife farming, wildlife ranching, wildlife trade, wild plant cultivation, and aquaculture. This includes working papers, project documents, impact assessments, and other unpublished (non-peer reviewed) material that provide evidence or discussion of the various positive or negative impacts of wildlife farming on conservation of habitat and biodiversity

We are primarily looking for case studies that have in some way sought to assess the conservation impacts of the wildlife farming and related interventions such as ranching, aquaculture and plant cultivation. We are interested in all papers that consider:

• Impacts on the conservation of target, farmed species

• Impacts on other species (e.g. animals used for feedstock).

• Impacts on broader habitat conservation

• Implications for and preferences of consumers to farmed wildlife

• Speculation about the impacts of wildlife farming

If you have any relevant documents or information, please contact Benjamin Ho (benjamin.ho@u.nus.edu) by 05 October, 2015.