Measuring Impact: Summary of Indicators for Combating Wildlife Trafficking

The project is implemented by Environmental Incentives, LLC, Foundations of Success, and ICF International. The project's primary objective is to develop robust indicators to track progress on USAID's investments in combating wildlife trafficking. Wildlife crime is a significant threat to biodiversity, with hundreds of millions of individual animals belonging to hundreds of species being targeted by illegal harvesting and trade. The revenue generated from wildlife trafficking is often used to finance violent non-state actors, including terrorist groups and unsanctioned militias. Armed conflict can exacerbate wildlife crime, and it is frequently associated with other forms of crime, such as money laundering. The importance of wildlife crime as a threat to conservation and development has attracted the attention of governments, non-governmental organizations, research institutions, and multilateral organizations worldwide. Strategies to combat wildlife crime depend on accurate and reliable knowledge about the status of focal species and the basic attributes of illegal wildlife supply chains. However, the clandestine nature of wildlife crime, its geographic spread, and the large number of people involved make analysis of status and trends, as well as measuring progress in combating it, a challenge. A report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime concludes that many of the available figures on wildlife crime are the result of guesswork rather than systematic analysis. Global knowledge about wildlife crime remains fragmented and lacking in common standards, which hinders the design, implementation, and monitoring of strategies to combat it. In response to this challenge, the Measuring Impact project has developed a CWT Situation Model and facilitated a workshop on CWT indicators and theories of change. The Measuring Impact project conducted a survey and analysis of existing wildlife crime indicators to inform the development of USAID indicators and build the evidence base for better alignment of the Agency's monitoring efforts with best practices. The survey identified over 200 metrics used to track wildlife crime, including indicators related to the volume of high-value wildlife products found in markets, law enforcement, and assessing the impact of specific strategies to combat crime. However, only a small subset of these indicators are used consistently or have been monitored regularly. Most indicators identified in the survey are neither normalized nor tracked to a baseline, which limits their capacity to identify trends in the state of the variable being measured. The indicators most commonly associated with long-term data tend to be related to confiscations, which are often reported by CITES, law enforcement agencies, or customs authorities. Most indicators identified in the survey are metrics associated with enforcement, including detection, arrests, and prosecutions. Other aspects, such as the drivers of wildlife crime and the efficacy of campaigns to develop alternate income sources, appear to have received comparatively less attention from the actors surveyed.