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Finally, in terms of appealing to higher loyalties, Sollund 2012 suggests offenders legitimise their actions by claiming the use of animals serves a higher need.. Accordingly, the commonp

outside the offender’s control This, in turn, helps offenders in the IWT to condemn the condemners—it is not their behaviour (others can, after all, engage in these acts legally), but the unreasonable rules and legislators at fault Von Essen et al (2014) recognise poachers’ offences as a form of social defiance in reaction to disillusionment and distrust of authority, legislation and processes Finally, in terms of appealing to higher loyalties, Sollund (2012) suggests offenders legitimise their actions by claiming the use of animals serves a higher need For example, the need to cure serious human illnesses is central to the demand in traditional medicine; as evidenced by exponential growth in demand for rhino horn linked to uncorroborated claims that rhino horn medicine cured cancer (UNODC 2013) Accordingly, the commonplace harms inflicted on wildlife are an indirect consequence of trade activities, as offenders use techniques of neutralisation

to routinely permit or ignore this abuse

Responses to the IWT

Responses to the wildlife trade, while diverse, broadly fall into official (political mobilisation, legislation, enforcement and prosecution) and

unof-ficial responses (non-governmental prevention and intervention), both are discussed below with a particular focus on UK data from the EFFACE project The official response to abuse in the wildlife trade primarily focuses

on regulating the trade, while the unofficial response engages with both regulation and animal welfare What follows is a brief description of the official and unofficial responses to the wildlife trade In so doing, we detail the nature of these responses and consider how effective they are in prevent-ing harm to wildlife

The Official Response

Maher and Sollund’s (2016) evaluation of the UK and Norwegian responses

to the IWT supports existing literature in identifying shortfalls in the regulation of the wildlife trade Fundamentally, animal welfare does not underpin the official response, resulting in inadequate prevention of harm

to wildlife Their research found that legislation, policy and the enforcement, prosecution and sentencing of offences not only fails to adequately consider animal welfare but also causes further harm through, for example, the euthanasia of healthy animals This is not to say animal welfare has not

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