Humans have been farming plants and animals for over 10,000 years. Meat, grain, medicinal ingredients, fabrics and cloths can all be produced efficiently and cheaply on farms or synthesised. If there is plentiful supply then why does the wildlife trade continue to threaten populations of our remaining natural environments? Clearly the available products do not present an appropriate substitute for the wild product given their prices, attributes or availability. Farming the desired species is therefore an intuitively neat solution to trade issues facing some species. However, I argue and present data to support that argument, that farming is not a panacea for wildlife trade problems. This thesis begins by outlining a theoretical framework around the impact which farming might have upon the poaching of species from the wild. Once the pre-requisites for a successful farming policy to protect wild populations were identified the thesis began to test these for existing trades. Chapters 2 and 3 quantitatively examine the substitutability of wild and farmed products with data from the Atlantic salmon (Salmo sa/ar) market in the UK and the bear bile (Ursus spp.) markets in China. Chapter 3 examines demand for wildlife derived pharmaceuticals by examining the health seeking behaviour in a dual system of traditional Chinese and western medicines. The fifth chapter estimates the total size of the market for wild bear bile after 3 decades of competition from legal farmed bile. The thesis then tests the assumption that competition from the farmed alternative will significantly diminish the incentive to hunt bears for bile by interviewing rural Cambodians. The last two chapters represent methodological work incidental to the core work of this thesis. A novel method to measuring attitudes was developed (and used in chapter 5) to measure moral attitudes towards bear bile use. Finally a method for measuring the marginal value of small changes in available habitat was developed and published during the course of this thesis.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:556474 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Dutton, Adam |
| Publisher | University of Oxford |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
Page generated in 0.0019 seconds