Hunting as a crime? A cautionary note concerning how ecological biodiversity and anti-hunting arguments contribute to harms against indigenous peoples and the rural poor

Abstract

This article examines concerns related to hunting (and fishing) regulations that impact the ability of poor and indigenous peoples to engage in behaviors such as hunting that they require for subsistence needs. Often, green and conservation criminological research, theory and policy overlook this issue. Typically, those approaches favor hunting/fishing legislation and bans to preserve widlife and biodiversity, or for philosophical reasons related to preventing harms against wildlife. Although those approaches may, in some cases, help preserve widlife and biodiversity, the unintended consequences of anti-hunting policies on the poor and indigenous peoples, who are also often the rural poor, are overlooked. Moreover, anti-hunting/fishing policies are not the best method for preserving  biodiversity. Rather, policies should promote regulation of forest and other wild areas, prohibit forest segmentation, and address how
economic forces drive the forms of ecological destruction that lead to biodiversity loss.