Rosaleen Duffy has long drawn the ire of those who support a forceful “guns and gates” approach to protecting wildlife. A professor of international politics at Sheffield University in the U.K., Duffy has written extensively about the use of military and law enforcement strategies to stop the illegal wildlife trade, arguing that they can alienate communities whose support is needed for conservation to be successful in the long term.

Last year, Duffy published the book Security and Conservation with Yale Press, which critiques the drift of conservation into the global security sphere in recent decades. In her telling, portrayals of conservation as a war for wildlife being waged against terrorists and dead-eyed poachers may have been useful in grabbing the attention of policymakers, but they’re distorting the real drivers of biodiversity loss. The book covers a wide range of territory, bringing readers into the Balkanized world of private military companies, former intelligence officers, and tech giants that are increasingly present in modern conservation — especially in Africa.

With scandals over human rights abuses by rangers connected to WWF and other groups making headlines in recent years, Mongabay’s Ashoka Mukpo spoke to Duffy to better understand her perspective, and what advice she has for the conservation world. The following interview has been edited for style and length.

Mongabay: Your book is called Security and Conservation. Could you talk a little bit about what “security” means here?

Rosaleen Duffy: The purpose of the book is to look at how conservation, particularly in strategies to tackle the illegal wildlife trade, has turned toward security-oriented approaches like enhanced military training, use of surveillance, use of more classical counterinsurgency-type approaches of intelligence gathering, and so on. And you know, why that happened, and why it was thought to be an effective approach. What I wanted to do was look at how that was changing conservation, and in what ways that might then limit conservation going forward in the future. What I was seeing in the illegal wildlife trade, and then strategies to tackle it, is that these aren’t just the ways things are talked about or presented. It has actual material effects on people on the ground. So, we see human rights abuses, for example, as a result of militarization.

Mongabay: You point out in your book that this process of linking military activities, or intelligence and law enforcement activities, to conservation isn’t new, and that this has been happening for a while. Why is this book important right now?

Rosaleen Duffy: I wanted to be clear that there is a long history of the use of force and conservation in some contexts, particularly in the colonial context with integrating military strategies and the use of force to enforce protected areas, for example. But what I saw was a much bigger kind of wholesale turn toward this [approach] among some conservation organizations, and some national agencies as well. The level of financial support that was coming from the international system from donors, governments and the private sector also, I think, made this a key shift. And I think the technological developments in intelligence gathering and surveillance also meant that this book was important now, although there is a long history of the use of violent force in conservation.

Mongabay: So you feel that in the last, let’s say, decade or so there’s been a particular movement toward these more forceful approaches?

Rosaleen Duffy: I don’t want to say that this is all conservation — absolutely not. There are other initiatives around community-based conservation or working with Indigenous communities, and I don’t want to render all of that invisible. But what I did want to do was highlight that there was this particular shift especially in counter-poaching and tackling the illegal wildlife trade, and to talk about why that was problematic for conservation as a whole. Because at the end of the day, you know, if five or 10 years from now there’s an acknowledgment that these strategies have failed, if communities have been alienated because they‘ve borne the brunt of this use of violent force, military tactics and surveillance, and they’ve been put at risk, how receptive are those communities going to be toward conservationists who then say, “Hey, now let’s do something that’s more community-oriented”?

Mongabay: The response to these kinds of criticisms that I’ve often heard is, there’s no time to be too wishy-washy about all this. We have a biodiversity crisis, we’re losing species, and we need a tough approach to a tough problem. When you hear that, what do you think?

Rosaleen Duffy: That’s a question that I’m often asked. I’m very sympathetic to the argument that this is a crisis. I’m not trying to say that that’s not the case. Absolutely, I think that we do need to do something urgently. But the question is what, and the problem for me with these kinds of strategies is they are very short-term. They might work in a few places, for a short time, and they might save a few animals. But actually, these strategies do nothing to address the underlying drivers of the biodiversity crisis. So, they don’t deal with global inequalities. They don’t deal with economic growth. They don’t deal with habitat destruction or agricultural intensification, urbanization, pollution, and so on.

The second thing is that when I first began doing this work, I actually found that argument more compelling than I do now. Fifteen years ago there was a crisis with poaching rates and it was more convincing to say “We need to do something urgently now.” But to my mind, 15 years in, not much has changed, and in fact lots of things have gotten worse. So that argument has less purchase.

Mongabay: To press you on that a little bit, my understanding is that actually rates of certain kinds of poaching have decreased in parts of Africa, particularly of elephants and rhinos. People might argue that’s partially a result of a greater emphasis on law enforcement and interdiction.

Rosaleen Duffy: That’s a fair enough comment to make as well. I think that’s one example where we could say, to a degree certain kinds of strategies may have worked for certain kinds of animals in certain places. I’m not in any way trying to deny that. It’s really good news that rates of poaching of rhinos and elephants have decreased. But that then takes the focus away from the much bigger kind of losses that we’re seeing. The illegal wildlife trade is more than just rhinos and elephants. They get all the attention, they’re charismatic, everybody loves them. But it doesn’t really address the wider questions about the illegal wildlife trade.

I also think that it’s very difficult to say with a great deal of certainty that it was a shift toward security approaches that produced that change. There are also things going on around demand reduction, and there are reductions in elephant and rhino populations so they’re less accessible to poachers, and so on. There were lots of different factors playing into that decline — it’s not just about the security approach.

Mongabay: To a lot of people, when you say “poacher” they think of a guy with aviator sunglasses and an AK-47 in a helicopter. Your book wants to complicate that image. What do you think the discourse around poaching sometimes misses?

Rosaleen Duffy: I think the way that some NGOs in particular have presented poaching has really played into long-standing stereotypes which are underpinned by colonial thinking and racism. If we look at the imagery that some NGOs use about poachers, they’re overwhelmingly Black, for example. Whereas actually we know that poaching rings can be much more diverse than that, and that these stereotypes that are constantly used in the visuals actually don’t often reflect what’s happening on the ground. So we need to look at the whole chain of poaching, not just the person who might pull the trigger. There’s often a much bigger group of people who are involved in a network, and we need to look at them as well. They can often be legitimate businesses, for example. We need to really complicate the picture that we have about poaching and who are poachers.

In European storytelling, Robin Hood is often looked at as a kind of hero figure. But you could see Robin Hood as a type of poacher — someone who’s taking deer or rabbits from private land. If we look at the history of how poaching is defined, particularly in Africa, it was the criminalization of African hunting methods by colonial powers that led to the current ways that poachers are defined by some organizations. So we need to look back into that history and the creation of European sport hunters as the gentlemanly sporting “first conservationists” versus Africans as poachers.

Mongabay: People might respond to that by saying it doesn’t really matter how we understand them. Poaching is a crime and it needs to be dealt with as such. Why is it important to have a textured understanding of the history of poaching?

Rosaleen Duffy: I think it’s really important because understanding the history of poaching and the criminalization of hunting methods — but also how many of the world’s most famous national parks often came into being through the very violent eviction of human communities that lived there — also helps us understand why some communities continue to resist conservation initiatives. There is this history of social injustice around conservation. And I think it’s really important that conservation NGOs and conservation authorities don’t try to shy away from that, but actually acknowledge that history and use it as part of their understanding of [those communities].

I understand the argument that it’s a crime, and that crimes need to be dealt with. But I think critical criminologists would also say that we need to understand the definition of crime — and laws themselves — can often be constructed by the powerful in a society, and that actually they might not match local understandings of what’s appropriate and what’s not. We need to think of the category of “crime” in its social, political and economic contexts. Thinking about it in that way and getting a nuanced understanding actually can produce much more effective strategies for dealing with poaching, because we understand why people do it, and what alternatives could be provided. That’s much more effective to me than saying we need to increase penalties, or we need to increase conviction rates.

Mongabay: Your book describes an amazing plethora of military and law enforcement people, current and former, who are now involved in conservation, particularly in Africa. Who’s watching over them?

Rosaleen Duffy: That’s actually a concern that was expressed to me by representatives of some private military companies who were operating in Africa. Several actually did say they were concerned that there wasn’t this kind of oversight. The International Committee for the Red Cross has put together a series of guidelines for humanitarian organizations who work with militaries, but there’s no equivalent in conservation. So at best, we can hope that these organizations are under the watchful eye of the national authorities of the countries that they work in. But very often, they’re not. There was also concern within some sections of the U.S. government about these groups of U.S. veterans who were operating as anti-poaching trainers or delivering anti-poaching [services], and how there’s essentially no oversight from the U.S. government, and that this was creating the conditions for a perfect storm. If there was a situation where one of them shot and killed a poacher or there were any other kinds of allegations, it could become a serious diplomatic incident. So it’s actually an issue that some of the organizations themselves are concerned about: they want more oversight.

Mongabay: How does competition for and the desire for funding play into this movement that you’ve described toward a security approach to conservation in recent years?

Rosaleen Duffy: Funding is really critical. Conservation NGOs, in particular, are engaged in constant competition for funding and they have to have new initiatives all the time that will appeal to donors, philanthropists and so on. And they can very often be in direct competition with one another for that funding. So I did have more than one representative of a conservation organization complain to me that they felt they were pressured to make the claim that tackling the illegal wildlife trade would also provide more security and stability, that it would help combat terrorist organizations and so on, in order to make a case for funding. They felt uncomfortable with doing that, because they knew it wasn’t accurate. So on one hand, I can understand why some conservation organizations do this, because they’re in a very competitive funding environment. And it’s not just funding either, it’s public attention, it’s government attention, and making the case about security can catapult an issue to the top of an agenda. Unfortunately, making an argument about social inequality doesn’t. But tell the U.S. government that if they protect elephants, they’ll also be tackling al-Shabaab, and that’s really compelling for them. So I think funding has a really big part to play in this.

We could see from some of the analysis that we did of funding from the U.K. and U.S. governments that there was this shift over time toward initiatives that were security and law enforcement-related, and away from ones that were oriented toward communities and sustainable livelihoods. And critically, the sort of Cinderella of all this is demand reduction. The vast majority of money was going into enforcement, a much smaller amount to sustainable livelihood strategies, but an even tinier amount into demand reduction, which is the one that loses out. But for me, if you tackle the market for [wildlife products], that helps solve poaching problems, because if there’s no market there’s no value to the animal and less incentive to poach.

Mongabay: These more enforcement-based approaches to conservation are often quite popular with host governments, whether by inviting organizations like African Parks to manage protected areas for them, or signing partnership agreements that involve NGOs working with park rangers on patrol. Why does the militarized conservation model appeal to them?

Rosaleen Duffy: One reason is sometimes just that conservation itself is something that a government doesn’t have as a funding priority. An external organization coming in and saying, “Hey, we’ll do it, and we’ll fund it,” is sometimes really welcome for governments who already have massive pressure on their budget from other sectors. So that can be part of it. But another part can also be that this can also be a very convenient way to outsource surveillance and enforcement against communities that are resistant to government control. So it can be important for national security reasons as much as for funding reasons.

Mongabay: Do you think that any conservation organizations feel like maybe they’ve gotten themselves in over their heads in some places with this approach?

Rosaleen Duffy: I can’t name them because of the ethics approvals from my research, but I can think of one or two examples where small conservation organizations partnered with a private military company in the belief that it was a good way to address poaching, and then realized that actually it made them a target in a very complicated conflict scenario. They were then just looked at as another armed actor in an internal conflict within a country. But I think some of the bigger ones are very keen to expand their portfolio and on using these kinds of approaches. They’re aware that those lines are blurred, but that’s something they find acceptable within their remit.

Mongabay: In some cases, ranger operations and security-oriented conservation approaches are happening in fragile contexts where the state isn’t really present. And communities might even feel that rangers or conservationists offer them some sort of protection against militias or other non-state actors. Do you have thoughts about that kind of dynamic?

Rosaleen Duffy: It’s really important to be clear that the local context really matters. Nothing is ever unremittingly bad or completely good. I can understand why communities might welcome in rangers or private military companies to provide more security, particularly in complex conflict environments. But again, it’s something that’s quite short-term. It doesn’t really address why the conflict is happening or why a community feels threatened, it doesn’t provide that longer-term security for communities at all. And as in the case of the small conservation organizations I was talking about earlier, it can create a situation where that community or organization gets seen as yet another armed actor.

Mongabay: There have been scandals related to militarized conservation activities with some public backlash in recent years. I’m thinking in particular of the WWF scandal that was broken by BuzzFeed in 2019. Have you seen a shift take place since then?

Rosaleen Duffy: Sadly, no, I don’t see a fundamental shift. What I see is business as usual. I think that the BuzzFeed story was a really key moment that could have been embraced by organizations who should have been concerned about what was happening on the ground and the partnerships that they’d forged. But instead, what we saw was a report from WWF that kind of brushed it under the carpet, and didn’t really address [the problem]. That’s not to say that there aren’t particular individuals within those organizations who are really committed to making sure that their organization isn’t involved in human rights abuses. But the problem is that those are individuals within big organizations that don’t have access to the levers of power. And I think that was a real missed opportunity, actually, because it was a moment when there was a lot of attention on the negative effects of this kind of approach. And that moment passed. Unfortunately, I don’t see an improvement.

Mongabay: Some of these organizations might argue, well, we put it in grievance procedures, and we’ve fundamentally changed our relationships. It doesn’t sound like you’re putting a lot of stock in that response.

Rosaleen Duffy: No, not at all. And in fact, for some of those organizations I was involved in initial discussions about trying to draw up guidelines, or trying to create a space where there could be an open dialogue between different views on this. But unfortunately, I ended up withdrawing from those discussions, because I felt that what was actually happening was they were opening a space where they would hear different views, and then ignore them, dismiss them, or not act on them. So some nice guidelines might be drawn up, or glossy social media might be put out about how they’re addressing these issues. But actually, fundamentally on the ground, things were not changing, and they haven’t changed, I don’t think.

Mongabay: That seems very short-sighted on those organizations’ part.

Rosaleen Duffy: It’s almost got to a point where it’s been forgotten. It’s kind of like there was this big investigation, and they said “Sorry, not sorry,” and didn’t really do anything else. And now it’s not something that gets discussed as much as it was at that point. I think issues moved on, the pandemic started, then concerns about the wildlife trade, biosecurity, and the need to address wildlife markets as a source of zoonosis became the big issue. So I think the moment was lost. Don’t get me wrong, there have been efforts by some people, like the [2019 Chitwan Declaration] that was drawn up at the rangers’ conference, and that’s good. It’s been well-intentioned but we need to see it implemented, and I don’t see that.

Mongabay: Do you think that conservation activities are less scrutinized by the public than maybe other resource-related activities?

Rosaleen Duffy: With conservation in particular, but also a bit like humanitarian assistance, there’s an assumption that people and organizations are in there to do good, and therefore they should be beyond scrutiny and criticism. That’s something that I’ve faced not just in the research I’ve done on the illegal wildlife trade, but also on the political work around tourism and on neoliberal approaches to conservation. If you offer criticisms of conservation organizations, you can immediately expect pushback that says, “They’re trying to do something.” But one of my points has always been that sometimes doing something is worse than doing nothing, because it could close off better options for conservation in the future. I think we need to really hold conservation organizations to account, especially in situations where they have control over very large areas and can be involved in active policing and law enforcement.

Mongabay: What do you think the general public needs to understand when it comes to the conservation of wildlife and biodiversity?

Rosaleen Duffy: I think about the U.K., for example, where what we really need to do is, in a sense, unlearn and decolonize our thinking away from assumptions that people are an enemy of wildlife. And especially that Black people are an enemy of wildlife, and that they’re the white saviors who go in and help wildlife and love animals. All of that is really problematic, but it’s so widespread. It’s constant that you see this. And we can see as well with our political system, that when politicians invite in experts to brief them, they won’t come and ask an academic like me; it will be somebody who’s a celebrity or a social media star, or somebody who’s in an NGO who has a particular ax to grind. And they get listened to much more easily and much more fully than people who spend years working on this, or crucially, to people who live with wildlife in particular places as well. So I think we have to get out different stories about wildlife. But there’s a lot that we have to unlearn in order to embrace that, I think.

Mongabay: If you had the ear of the conservation industry, what would you want to get across to them about what to be careful of and how to approach things like wildlife trafficking and protected area management?

Rosaleen Duffy: One thing I would be asking them to do is try to untangle themselves from the [security] strategy and think about alternatives like demand reduction. To address things like social injustice and the history of conservation, and not to try and pretend that it didn’t happen or that we’re in a different phase now, but to acknowledge that really problematic history and embrace and deal with it. Instead of focusing constantly on organized crime, which attracts all the attention, we also need to look at how legal businesses might be involved in wildlife trafficking, either knowingly or unknowingly, and address that. That’s a huge group that can be really important in carrying out trafficking, but who are often overlooked because it would mean going up against big private business actors. And there’s been a long history of conservation organizations partnering with the private sector. So I think they need to think about their strategies much more fully and partner with local organizations and Indigenous groups rather than corporations, and address the historical injustices in conservation.

Banner image: Park rangers carrying out an anti-poaching patrol in Kahuzi-Biega National Park in the DRC. Image by A.J.Plumptre for WCS.

Militarized conservation: Insecurity for some, security for others? (commentary)

Related listening from Mongabay’s podcast: We look at the history and social impacts of “fortress conservation,” its intersection with conservation militarization, and the violence endured by the communities who inhabit protected areas. Listen here:

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