We will be working closely with the sponsor Congressional Research Service, as well as the Wildlife Conservation Society who will be helping train us in technical details associated with wildlife conservation and possibly GIS applications of poaching incidents.
Here are the proposed topics for the PRP, which will likely involve some group work. We will adjust the number of papers based on the number of students in the class. We're likely to do half of the papers before the winter break, and the other half after the winter break. These papers are not intended to be especially long, maybe 20 pages each.
One product is to address the relationship between wildlife trafficking and national security, with an emphasis on Africa. This product will incorporate data collected through the SMART program on poaching incidents and correlate incidents with conflict areas, where possible.
A second product is to address policy mechanisms to address demand reduction in consumer countries (notably China). The policies will be collected from examples used by other countries and analyzed for their potential use by the U.S. Congress.
A third paper is to address sport-hunting policies in the United States and other countries and is to analyze the use of enhancement of survival permits.
A fourth paper is to analyze the use of regional cooperative entities and multilateral entities to address wildlife trafficking, in terms of enforcing laws and dismantling organized crime.
A fifth paper is to analyze the conservation and socio-economic effects of wildlife trafficking in range countries and discuss policy mechanisms that Congress could use to address these effects.
A sixth paper is to discuss and analyze the use of public-private partnerships in addressing the illegal wildlife trade.