Green Criminology Approach on Illegal Wildlife Hunting

Abstract

The objectives of this research were to study illegal wildlife hunting in Thailand, to find the reason and factors to illegal wildlife hunting, to analyze the result, to explain the illegal wildlife hunting phenomena and to propose the sustainable and practical solutions in the aspect of green criminology. This is qualitative research using the documentary research, field research and in-depth interview with purposive sampling of 13 participants. The participants included hunters; law enforcers and non-government staff in wildlife conservation program. The result was found that the most violent illegal wildlife hunting was located in western Thailand. followed by, North Eastern Thailand. The pattern of illegal wildlife hunting can be separated in four proposes for (1) local livelihood 2) commercial (3) recreation and (4) trophy hunting. Five factors leading to illegal wildlife hunting include (1) social inequality (2) weak criminal justice system, (3) economic disparity (4) values, and (5) belief. The result proposed green criminological solutions to reduce illegal wildlife hunting through (1) building social equity (2) revising some sections in wildlife law to allow for commercial uses of some wildlife species (3) improving the criminal justice process in wildlife criminal case (4) strengthening protection system to cease illegal wildlife hunting (5) building public areas that provides space for human and wildlife to share resources and (6) collaborating between the government and non-government organizations in creating correct perception on wildlife.