by Caitlin M. Snyder
Dr.
Meredith L. Gore, Assistant Professor, Michigan State University’s Department
of Fisheries and Wildlife & School of Criminal Justice in East Lansing,
Michigan, introduced an interdisciplinary framework for mitigating
relationships between wildlife and humans called conservation
criminology in a presentation held at SUNY ESF
on Thursday, March 4, 2010. She presented her seminar “From lemurs to livelihoods: What can conservation criminology offer for
resolving environmental risks in Madagascar?” as part of the Standing
on the Shoulders of Giants, Adaptive Peaks, and Women in Scientific and
Environmental Professions Speaker Series sponsored by the ESF Graduate Student Association, Department of
Environmental & Forest Biology, and Women's Caucus.
Dr. Gore
began by describing her personal background and experiences in her area of
expertise, and posed questions to the audience about public perceptions of
environmental behavior and risk, decision-making and policy, and the
coexistence of wildlife and people. Using a case study, she described the
socioeconomic and environmental status of both villages and ecosystems of Madagascar, and
focused on lemur conservation to illustrate the need to ameliorate the imminent
biodiversity crisis.
Despite
numerous challenges facing the island of Madagascar (e.g., poverty, lack of
infrastructure, corrupt governance, disenfranchisement, and climate barriers),
Dr. Gore expressed promise by suggesting a novel, integrated approach that
combines aspects of natural resource management, criminal justice, and risk and
decision science. She discussed methods and solutions to environmental risks
associated with human-wildlife interactions by providing critical inspection of
the key characteristics, scope, and assumptions of this approach dubbed conservation
criminology. Although there are many strengths and weaknesses still to overcome
with its application, conservation criminology may be an opportunity to draw disciplines
together and apply a progressive approach to research, teaching, and management
of certain environmental risks. Dr. Gore provided a conceptual framework for
conservation criminology in Madagascar,
and discussed the advantages that it could bring such as better decision
making, stakeholder engagement, law enforcement, and conservation of endemic biodiversity.
Together, conservation biology and criminal justice have the ability to foster
theoretical development and a positive interaction among livelihoods and
lemurs.
Dr. Gore's
formal training is in the human dimensions of wildlife management, and environment
and resource policy. She is a member of the Environmental Science and Policy
Program (ESPP), serves as core faculty with the Center for Advanced
International Development (CASID), and collaborates with scholars in the MSU
Risk Research Initiative and Office of Study Abroad. She also serves as core
faculty for the Conservation Criminology certificate program, offered jointly
by the Department of Fisheries & Wildlife and School of Criminal Justice.
Her research interests focus on public perceptions of wildlife and
environmental risk, human-wildlife conflict, community-based natural resource
management, human dimensions of natural resource management, conservation
criminology, and program evaluation. To
learn more about her research, visit http://www.conservationcriminology.msu.edu.
For
upcoming events in the Women in Scientific Environmental Professions Speaker
Series, please visit: http://www.esf.edu/womenscaucus/speaker.htm.
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