Evaluating the Effectiveness of Wildlife Protection Laws in Uttar Pradesh: An Analysis of Enforcement and Prosecution

Authors

  • Renu Singh Amity Institute of Forestry and Wildlife, Amity University, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Sector-125, Noida Uttar Pradesh https://orcid.org/0009-0008-4651-7757
  • Satyaranjan Behera Odisha Biodiversity Board, Regional Plant Resource Centre, Bhubaneswar-15, Odisha https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1913-225X
  • Janmejay Sethy Amity Institute of Forestry and Wildlife, Amity University, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Sector-125, Noida Uttar Pradesh

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10407459

Keywords:

evaluating, Enforcement, Legislation, Prosecution Efforts, Strategies

Abstract

This study revealed that wildlife law enforcement in Uttar Pradesh, India is facing several challenges, making it ineffective. The study aimed to identify these challenges and examine the enforcement strategies employed by wildlife officers. Officers were given a questionnaire, which revealed that they mostly relied on deterrence tactics to enforce laws by detecting and punishing violators. In Uttar Pradesh, a total of 746 cases of wildlife crime were registered, making it a major concern in North India. According to the NCR Bureau report, since 2016, Uttar Pradesh has accounted for more than 25% of the country's wildlife crime cases. Out of the total cases registered, 551 cases were pending in the department, 91 cases were pending in court, and 108 were compound cases. According to our observations, the majority of the respondents were male, accounting for 58.5%, while females comprised the remaining 41.5%. The age distribution of the respondents was as follows: 45.7% were between 36-49 years old, and 22.8% were middle-aged or older. Most of the respondents had over 10 years of experience in the field and had extensive knowledge about wildlife. When it came to educational qualifications, 41.5% had completed high school, 31.1% had undergraduate degrees, and 11.2% had graduate degrees. The majority of the respondents had passed the elementary Certificate of Education. Based on their academic qualifications or work experience, 57.3% of the respondents claimed to know wildlife and forests, while 6.9% declared expertise in law and biology, respectively. Although respondents may use a combination of strategies to enforce laws, the survey results show a higher mean score for deterrence strategy (M = 5.05, SD = .396) in both states compared to compliance strategy (M = 4.43, SD = .621) and responsive regulation (M = 3.61 SD = .561). These findings could be valuable in developing capacity-building programs for wildlife officers and helping decision-makers at the state and federal levels allocate resources to wildlife authorities.

References

Amirante, D. (2012).'Environmental Courts in Comparative Perspective: Preliminary Reflections on the National Green Tribunal of India' 29 Pace Environmental Law Review 441.

Anagnostou, M. & Doberstein, B.(2021). Illegal wildlife trade and other organised crime: a scoping review. Ambio 51:1615–1631. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-021-01675-y.

Beisner, B.A., Heagerty, A., Seil, S.K., Balasubramaniam, K.N., Atwill, E.R., Gupta, B.K., Tyagi, P.C., Chauhan, N.P.S, Bonal, B.S., Sinha, P.R., & Brenda M.C. (2014). Human-wildlife conflict: proximate predictors of aggression between humans and rhesus macaques in India. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 156(2), 286–294. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.22649.

Cook, D., Roberts, M., & Lowther, J. (2002). The international wildlife trade and organised crime: A review of the evidence and the role of the UK. Godalming, England: WWF-UK.

Gulati S, Karanth K.K., Le, N.A., & Noack, F. (2021). Human casualties are the dominant cost of human-wildlife conflict in India. Proceeding of National Academic Science USA 118(8), 1-8, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1921338118

Holmern, T., Muya, J., & Røskaft, E. (2007). Local law enforcement and illegal bushmeat hunting outside the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania. Environmental Conservation, 34(1),55-63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/ S037-6892-9070-03712.

Keane, A., Jones, J. P. G., Edwards-Jones, G., & Milner-Gulland, E.J. (2008). The sleeping policeman: Understanding issues of enforcement and compliance in conservation. Animal Conservation, 11(2), 75-82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-1795.2008.00170.x.

Kaaria, D., & Muchiri, M. (2011). Enforcement challenges across borders: Detecting and prosecuting illegal wildlife trafficking. In Ninth International Conference on Environmental Compliance and Enforcement (pp. 204-208). Whistler, Canada.

Patel, N.G., Rorres, C., Joly, D.O., Brownstein, J.S., Boston, R., Levy, M.Z., & Smith, G. (2015). Quantitative methods of identifying the key nodes in the illegal wildlife trade network. Proceedings National Academy of Sciences USA 112(26):7948–7953. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1500862112

Scheffers, B.R., Oliveira, B.F., Lamb, I., & Edwards, D.P. (2019). Global wildlife trade across the tree of life. Science 366(6461):71–76. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aav5327

Sharma, C. (2003). Enforcement mechanisms for endangered species protection in Hong Kong: A legal perspective. Vermont Journal of Environmental Law, 5, 1-34.

Wilson-Wilde, L. (2010) Wildlife crime: a global problem. Forensic Science, Medicine and Pathology 6(3):221–222. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12024-010-9167-8.

Gaubert, P., Antunes, A., Meng, H., Miao, L., Peigne, S., Justy, F., Njiokou, F., Dufour, S., Danquah, E., Alahakoon. J., Verheyen, E., Stanley, W.T., O’Brien, S.J., Johnson, W.E., & Luo, S.J. (2017). The complete phylogeny of pangolins: scaling up resources for the molecular tracing of the most trafficked mammals on earth. Journal of Heredity 109(4):347–359. https://doi.org/10.1093/jhered/esx097.

Naha, D., Dash, S.K., Kupferman, C., Beasley, J.C., & Sathyakumar, S. (2021). Movement behavior of a solitary large carnivore within a hotspot of human-wildlife conflicts in India. Science Report 11(1):3862. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-83262-5.

Nurse, A. (2015) Policing Wildlife: Perspectives on the Enforcement of Wildlife Legislation.

UNODC (2012). Wildlife and Forest Crime Analytic Toolkit (United Nations, 2012)

UNODC (2018), Guide on Drafting Legislation to Combat Wildlife Crime (United Nations, 2018)

Downloads

Published

2023-12-19

How to Cite

Singh, R. ., Behera, S. ., & Sethy, J. (2023). Evaluating the Effectiveness of Wildlife Protection Laws in Uttar Pradesh: An Analysis of Enforcement and Prosecution. Journal of Wildlife and Biodiversity, 8(2), 385–396. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10407459

Most read articles by the same author(s)