Illegal wildlife trade can threaten biodiversity and economic development. Criminal enterprises may add wildlife products to their list of illicit goods by using established trade routes, networks, and individuals. On the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, killing of sea turtles and removal of their eggs is commonplace. However, beyond conservation NGOs reporting evidence of illegal take, little is known about this activity. Through semi-structured interviews with law enforcement, community members, NGOs, and illegal harvesters, alongside anecdotal information and observations, we aimed to understand the motivations for illegal take. To cross-reference these findings, we assessed sensitivities surrounding illegal harvesting by asking the general public sensitive questions using the randomized response technique; a method used to elicit sensitive information whilst insuring the anonymity of respondents. We included a questionnaire to establish if differences in demographics affected the probability respondents would admit to a turtle-related crime. Our findings identified a rare example of illegal extraction of a wildlife product driven by motivations that were not exclusively livelihood based. We found the majority of illegal take was undertaken by relatively few individuals, dependent on narcotics. The most cited reason for illegal take was that turtle eggs could be used to procure drugs. Law enforcement was under resourced, and informants reported that prosecutions were rare. Local people preferred to purchase rather than harvest eggs suggesting the trade is supply-driven. Those interviewed did not generally regard the subject of illegal harvest as sensitive. Low education levels, high unemployment rates, and marginalization of certain groups may increase susceptibility to narcotics. Although substance misuse and addiction appear to drive illegal trade, associated poverty and marginalization may explain why drug dependency is so prevalent in Caribbean Costa Rica. Increased work opportunities and drug rehabilitation programs may assist in reducing illegal take of turtle eggs on nesting beaches.
Author Archives: Eleni Matechou
SE@K Thursday research lunch & cake – 2023/2024
For the second term of the 23/24 academic year, we have an exciting plan for SE@K and guest talks:
- 25th Jan Session : Alex Talk ; Cake : Milly
- 1st Feb Session : Meta-Regression ; Cake : Tommy
- 8th Feb Session : Daniel Talk ; Cake : Ioannis
- 15th Feb Session : Talk by Jon Barry from CEFAS on MCMC for machine learning environmental monitoring; Cake : Diana
- 22nd Feb Session : Ioannis Talk ; Cake : Eleni
- 29th Feb Session : TBA ; Cake : Lucy
- 7th Mar Session : Lena Talk ; Cake : Lena
- 14th Mar Session : Tommy Talk ; Cake : Milly
- 21st Mar Session : Milly Talk ; Cake : Ioannis
- 28th Mar Session : Lucy Talk ; Cake : Tommy
- 4th Apr Session : Lunch ; Cake : Diana
The talks in the first term were:
- 28th of Sep Session : Biosciences lecture; Cake : Eleni
- 5th of Oct Session : SE@K intro – all; Cake : Diana
- 12th of Oct Session : Building a website – all; Cake : Daniel
- 19th of Oct Session : Data presentation on Bats – Denise; Cake : Bruno
- 26th of Oct Session : Data presentation on Moths – Denise; Cake : Ioannis
- 2nd of Nov Session : Building a website – all; Cake : Milly
- 9th of Nov Session : RShiny apps – Tommy; Cake : Lena
- 16th of Nov Session : Ioannis’s paper; Cake : Lucy
- 23rd of Nov Session : GLMMs for moths; Cake : Eleni
- 30th of Nov Session : Monty & Jake – Satellite data; Cake : Denise
- 7th of Dec Session : Daniel I. and team – Wildmeat & agent-based modelling; Cake : Diana
- 14th of Dec Session : Meta-regression; Cake : Daniel
Migration & Movement Signature Research Theme Documentary
Watch the short documentary highlighting the work of the SRT, which also includes members of SE@K, such as Bruno, Daniel and Eleni.
STEM for Britain 2023
Alex presented his work on modelling metabarcoding data at the 2023 STEM for Britain Competition
His poster described the novel modelling framework, introduced in the corresponding paper, and showed results from a data set on ingested DNA from a survey in China.
SE@K Thursday lunches – Summer 2023
For the last term of the 22/23 academic year, we have an exciting plan for SE@K and guest talks
- 11th of May Session : eDNA – Alex/Eleni; Cake : Eleni
- 18th of May Session : Occupancy data – Ardian Ardiantiono; Cake : James
- 25th of May Session : BeeWalk modelling – Fabian; Cake : Fabian
- 1st of June Session : Elephant killings – Kennedy Leneuiyia; Cake : Milly
- 8th of June Session : Extinction Models – Dave Roberts; Cake : Bruno
- 15th of June Session : Binary time series – Takis (TBC); Cake : Daniel
- 22nd of June Session : PhD student NCSE presentations; Cake : Diana
Bruno and Eleni visited Stockholm
The visit was part of their Swedish research council funded project on modelling overcoverage in population registers, in collaboration with Dr Eleonora Mussino.
The first paper from this project is already under review, using multiple systems estimation to estimate the number of immigrants who are present but have not been observed in any register each year.
They are currently developing capture-recapture-recovery models with temporary emigration as an alternative approach for estimating the probability that an individual is there given that they weren’t observed.
New Biometrics paper
A new modelling framework for fast Bayesian inference in large occupancy data sets by Alex, Emily, Eleni and Byron just published in Biometrics.
The model accounts for spatio-temporal autocorrelation and gives robust inference on species presence, as evidence by the simulation results in the paper and the two case studies on one common and widespread and one rare species, using records from the Butterflies for the New Millennium database, producing occupancy indices spanning 45 years.
Spring term 2023 SE@K Thursday lunches
Spring term starts with the second half of Python training by Lena :-). Plan for the term in terms of sessions (and cake) below!
- 19th of January Session : Python training II – Lena; Cake : Lena & Daniel
- 26th of January Session : Daniel’s grant; Cake : Diana
- 2nd of February Session : HMM paper – Diana; Cake : Eleni
- 9th of February Session : HMM paper – Daniel; Cake : Oscar
- 16th of February Session : HMM paper – Takis (guest lecture); Cake : Alex
- 23rd of February Session : Variable selection/Hypothesis testing – Alex; Cake : James
- 2nd of March Session : HMM – Fred (guest lecture); Cake : Fabian
- 9th of March Session : Parameter redundancy – Daniel’s take; Cake : Tommy
- 16th of March Session Swedish register data – Bruno&Eleni ; Cake : Milly
- 23th of March Session : Swedish register data – Bruno&Eleni; Cake : Daniel
- 30th of March Session : Spatio-temporal models – Oscar; Cake : Diana
- 6th of April Session : eDNA data – Alex; Cake : Eleni
Se@k weekly lunches
The SE@K group are meeting weekly for research lunch and socialising 🙂
Autumn term
First week was about introductions and a tasty lunch at Dolce Vita!
Second week was about staff talking about their research interests, with Diana talking to the group about parameter redundancy.
Third, fourth & fifth week were about research students talking about their research, with Tommy using randomised response techniques to estimate the proportion of people in the group who like/liked their supervisor (!), Milly talking about distance sampling, Ioannis talking about Bayesian non-parametrics and ABC and Lena talking about predator-prey models!
The term went on with learning about Gaussian processes from Alex, about PDEs from Eduard and about Python from Lena!