Can Extinction Lead to Slavery? Researchers Find Wildlife Decline Leads to Slave Labor in West Africa

Hoping to address both complex social issues and wildlife conservation efforts, public policy researchers at the University of California Berkeley recently published a paper in the journal Science, outlining what they say is a primary cause for a large portion of the world's continued slave trade labor.

Correlating the global decline of vital wildlife populations with the increasing violent social conflicts, such as child slave trade and organized crime, lead researcher Justin Brashares and his team from UC Berkeley provide startling evidence that the decline in wildlife hunted for sustenance in many regions of the world is directly affecting current increases in human trafficking. Looking particularly into vulnerable demographics, women and children, in regions of West Africa, the team looked into piracy in Somalia and other countries to see the affects that declining wildlife is having on the social structure of these nations.

"This paper is about recognizing wildlife decline as a source of social conflict rather than a symptom" Brashares said. "Billions of people rely directly and indirectly on wild sources of meat for income and sustenance, and this resource is declining. It's not surprising that the loss of this critical piece of human livelihood has huge social consequences."

"Impoverished families are relying upon these resources for their livelihood, so we can't apply economic models that prescribe increases in prices or reduced demand as supplies become scarce. Instead, as more labor is needed to capture scarce wild animals and fish, hunters and fishers use children as a source of cheap labor" Brashares said. "Hundreds of thousands of impoverished families are selling their kids to work in harsh conditions."

Examining increasing violence in maritime piracy, along with the illegal poaching of crucial wildlife which brings in huge profits for criminals in West Africa, Brashares' research indicates that very few groups known for terrorist activity that are largely eliminating wildlife populations, which in turn is perpetuating further crime throughout the rest of the social network beneath them.

In eliminating a crucial renewable resource for the larger population, driving scarcity to the point of famine, criminal groups are collapsing the social infrastructure of their nations-putting children at risk of slavery and worse.

As a closing point to the paper, Brashares urges biologists and conservationists to work alongside experts in political science, criminology, public health and economics in order to collectively combat the complex social challenge set before them.

"This paper begins to touch the tip of the iceberg about issues on wildlife decline, and in doing so, the authors offer a provocative and completely necessary perspective about the holistic nature of the causes and consequences of wildlife decline" Michigan State University professor of conservation criminology, Meredith Gore says. "The most important bit from this article, I think, is that we need to better understand the factors that underlie fish and wildlife declines from a local perspective, and that interdisciplinary approaches are likely the best option for facilitating this understanding."