Workshop: Legal and illegal wildlife trade and laundering

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This event brings together scholars in green criminology, conservation studies, as well as practitioners, to discuss legal–illegal wildlife interfaces and laundering practices.

Illegal wildlife trafficking is an important form of transnational environmental crime, with devastating impacts on ecosystems, biodiversity, and local livelihoods, while generating enormous profits for criminal syndicates. The laundering of wildlife is a well-documented phenomenon, in which illegally sourced wildlife products are misrepresented as legal and subsequently sold through authorised or semi-authorised outlets. Driven by high demand, wildlife crimes are embedded within licit, semi-licit, and illicit economies, where boundaries between legality and illegality are frequently blurred and contested. These dynamics create opportunities for laundering illegal wildlife products into legal markets.

Key topics

  • The laundering of wildlife
  • Legal-illegal interfaces and contested illegality 
  • Wildlife crime and environmental harms

This workshop aims to

  • Share empirical and theoretical insights on wildlife crime and laundering practices;
  • Critically discuss legal–illegal interfaces and contested forms of legality in wildlife markets;
  • Foster interdisciplinary discussion and collaboration.

Programme

The first part of the afternoon (13:15–14:45) is chaired by Daan van Uhm. The second part of the afternoon (15:15–17:00) is chaired by Dina Siegel. 

13:00 – 13:15

Registration

13:15 – 13:20

Welcome 
Daan van Uhm, Utrecht University

13:20 – 13:45

Beyond the legal/illegal binary: Contested illegality and the laundering of wildlife 
Annette Hübschle, University of Cape Town, South Africa

13:45 – 14:10

Fisheries, laundering and crime in Mexico 
Zulia Orozco Reynoso, Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, Mexico

14:10 – 14:30

Contentions and mistrust in rhino-horn economies in South Africa 
Eliode Y. Bakole, PhD candidate, Utrecht University

14:30 – 14:45

Q & A

14:45 – 15:15

Break

15:15 – 15:40

Reptile pets in the EU: a prolific ‘legal’ trade of illegally sourced wildlife 
Adam Toomes, Wildlife Crime Research Hub, University of Adelaide

15:40 – 16:00

The Bitis trade between Southern Africa and the European Union 
Janine Heim, PhD in Criminology and Criminal Justice

16:00 – 16:20

Safety in numbers 
Jasper Eikelboom, Laboratory of Geo-Information Science and Remote Sensing, Wageningen University

16:20 – 16:40

Policy Implications for Wildlife Laundering 
Jennifer Scotland, Research Analyst, Organised Crime and Policing, RUSI

16:40 – 17:00

Tackling Wildlife laundering from an enforcement perspective 
José Antonio Alfaro Moreno, Team leader, Environmental Crime Unit, Europol

17:00 – 17:15

Q & A

17:15 – 17:20

Concluding remarks

Participation  

Participation is free of charge. Please register via the link below, until September 11th.

Online registration form

Organisation

This workshop is organized by the GREENLAUND team at Utrecht University in collaboration with the Global Risk Governance research program (GRG) of the Law Faculty at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.

Start date and time
End date and time
Location
Achter Sint Pieter 200 (Johanna Hudig building), Utrecht
Registration

Via the online form

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