INVESTIGATION INTO THE INDIVIDUAL AND COMBINED IMPACTS OF WILDLIFE TRADE AND HABITAT LOSS ON BIODIVERSITY AND CONSERVATION INTERVENTIONS INTHE TROPICS

My PhD thesis investigates the effects of two economic drivers of environmental change and biodiversity decline, wildlife trade and habitat loss. My first data chapter explores how socio-economic factors undermine protected areas by studying the spatial occurrence of protected area downgrading, downsizing and degazettement. Next, I apply a gravity-underreporting framework to data on legal and illegal wildlife trade, to understand the economic drivers of trade in mammalian, reptilian and avian products. The next two chapters focus Sundaland, a global biodiversity hotspot in South East Asia. Firstly, I combine remote sensing, ecological, and socio-economic data to quantify the combined impacts of wildlife trade and habitat loss on 308 species of forest dependent birds in the region. Finally, I engage in a process I have dubbed ‘extinction accounting’ for the extensive peatland areas in the region. I link biodiversity declines to agricultural profits from peatland conversion between 1990 and 2015.

Author dc:creator

• WILLIAM SIGOURNEY SYMES

• Conservation, wildlife trade, protected areas, birds, deforestation