Preventing Wildlife Crime
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About EMMIE

Bringing together a multi-disciplinary team of scientists and practitioners, this initiative assesses wildlife trafficking case studies by adapting the EMMIE framework, an evidence-rating scale, to move beyond metrics of effort and evaluate the true impact of crime prevention interventions. Focusing on the practical information required by those working on the ground to make informed decisions, we assessed deterrence strategies across five key dimensions:

We examined whether the strategy reduced wildlife trafficking, the magnitude of the impact, and whether the intervention was the primary cause of this decline. Our analysis also accounted for any displacement of criminal activity, which occurs when offenders change their behavior to avoid prevention measures, such as their location, time, target, or tactics of their crime, as well as when they switch to other criminal activities or new individuals replace former offenders.
We identified the intended target actor and the proposed mechanism of behavior change for each strategy. Our assessment classified this mechanism within the Situational Crime Prevention (SCP) framework and examined the evidence supporting its role in the intervention's outcome. Situational Crime Prevention (SCP) is an approach that aims to prevent crime by reducing the opportunities that facilitate it. It focuses on the immediate situations where crimes occur by making them less attractive to offenders through 25 specific techniques grouped into five main goals:
  1. Increase the Effort: making it more difficult for an offender to successfully commit a crime;
  2. Increase the Risks: raising the likelihood of an offender being caught or identified;
  3. Reduce the Rewards: decreasing the benefits or profits an offender gains from the crime;
  4. Reduce Provocations: addressing frustrations, stressors, or disputes that can trigger criminal acts;
  5. Remove Excuses: eliminating an offender's ability to justify their actions or claim ignorance of the rules.
We evaluated the context that determined the intervention's success or failure. The analysis describes how outcomes were affected by key conditions, such as the type of criminal actor targeted or the region of implementation, and discusses the challenges of applying the strategy in different environments.
Our assessment details how the intervention was implemented, including the time, resources, and partnerships required. We identified the key factors necessary for success, as well as the practical challenges faced during the process and how they were overcome.
Where the data allowed, our analysis documented the financial costs associated with the intervention and conducted a cost-benefit analysis. This involved evaluating whether the resources invested were justified by the resulting conservation and social benefits.

About Situational Crime Prevention

Situational Crime Prevention (SCP) is a proactive approach to crime control that focuses on modifying the immediate environment to reduce criminal opportunities, rather than on addressing the individual propensities or “root causes” of offenders. It seeks to make criminal action less attractive to potential offenders by systematically and permanently altering the settings where crimes occur. SCP is based on three key criminological theories, including.

  • The Rational Choice Perspective: This theoretical perspective points out that crime is a purposive behavior where potential offenders make decisions by assessing the costs and benefits of a criminal act. SCP intervenes by manipulating situational factors to alter this cost-benefit calculus.
  • The Routine Activity Approach: This approach suggests that direct-contact predatory crime occurs when a motivated offender and a suitable target converge in time and space in the absence of a capable guardian converge in time and space. SCP aims to disrupt this convergence.
  • The Crime Pattern Theory: This theory explains the spatial and temporal regularities of crime, identifying “crime generators” (places attracting many people, creating opportunities) and “crime facilitators” (places known to offenders for crime). Hence, SCP follows the guidelines to identify locations needing intervention.

SCP employs a standard methodology based on the action research paradigm to identify problems, analyze situational factors, devise and implement solutions, and evaluate outcomes. The approach encompasses 25 opportunity-reducing techniques categorized under five main headings: increasing effort, increasing risks, reducing rewards, reducing provocations, and removing excuses. Increasing the effort focuses on limiting motivated offenders actions or movements by using such techniques as ‘hardening targets’, ‘deflecting offenders’, ‘controlling tools and weapons’, ‘screening exits’, and ‘controlling access to facilities. Increasing the risk focuses on making it easier for guardians to detect offending through such techniques as ‘reducing anonymity’, ‘assisting natural surveillance’, ‘extending guardianship’, utilizing place managers’, and ‘strengthening formal surveillance’. The techniques under the reducing the reward heading are aimed at limiting the value of the target in a way that it is less attractive to the offender, and this can be achieved through ‘concealing the target’, ‘removing the target’, ‘identifying property’, ‘disrupting markets’, and ‘denying benefits’. The remaining two headings, including removing excuses and reducing provocations focus more on the situational controls and stimuli, shifting the responsibility, and include such techniques as ‘setting rules’, ‘assisting compliance’, ‘alerting conscience’, ‘posting instructions’, and ‘controlling drugs and alcohol’; as well as ‘reducing frustration and stress’, ‘reducing emotional arousal’, ‘avoiding disputes’, ‘neutralizing peer pressure’, and ‘discouraging imitation’. Together these techniques provide a rich set of tools and methods that can be used to prevent crime, including wildlife crime.

What Works in Wildlife Crime Prevention

Every intervention featured on this platform has been implemented somewhere, targeting a specific species, in a particular landscape, under distinct conditions. Some worked. Some didn’t. Most landed somewhere in between. That’s the reality of wildlife crime prevention: complex, context-dependent, and constantly evolving.

To make sense of this complexity, we use the EMMIE framework to evaluate each intervention. EMMIE helps unpack not just whether an approach was effective, but how it worked, under what circumstances, what challenges emerged during implementation, and what it cost. This helps practitioners and decision-makers look beyond surface-level results and understand the mechanisms behind success, or failure so they can properly replicate the intervention elsewhere to achieve positive results.

Understanding impact, though, is not just about what happened during the project, it’s also about what happened after and whether the intervention can continue to deliver results long-term without undue costs. Sustainability is a critical part of that conversation. While this project does not directly score sustainability, we emphasize its importance throughout. Interventions must be more than short-term fixes. They need to be designed for durability and financial self-sufficiency. Without this, an intervention’s value is limited and can lead to a stronger resurgence of wildlife crime if stopped. Many interventions show early promise, especially when driven by funding, urgency, or political momentum. But without local ownership, institutional support, or integration into existing systems, those gains often fade. That’s why sustainability means thinking long-term. To create a sustainable intervention, consider the following key concepts in your design and implementation:

Sustainability isn’t just about longevity, it’s about ownership, relevance, and resilience. Without this foundation, we risk repeating the same cycles: temporary success followed by slow decline.

Finally, it’s important to remember that context shapes everything. What works in one region or for one species may fail elsewhere. The same strategy that protects parrots in Nicaragua may be ineffective, or even harmful, for pangolins in Vietnam. That’s why this platform doesn’t just showcase case studies, it’s a decision-support tool. It helps conservationists, policymakers, and field practitioners match the right tools to the right problems, in the right places while acknowledging that finding the right solution for your context may require some trial and error. For that we recommend using the SARA process.

Wildlife crime is persistent. Our solutions must be, too. Illegal trade, poaching, and habitat loss don’t vanish, they shift, adapt, and return. To be effective, interventions must be designed not only to work, but to adapt and last. Use this resource as a foundation, not a prescription. And when designing your own interventions, prioritize sustainability from the outset.