Valerie Mitchell Scholar
PROFILE
I am currently a DPhil student studying the role of women in tropical wild meat systems, supervised by Professor Dame EJ Milner-Gulland and Dr Lauren Coad with the Interdisciplinary Centre for Conservation Science (ICCS), and Dr Amy Hinsley with WildCRU. My project explores women’s roles and responsibilities within tropical wild meat systems, as well as their power and influence, to better understand the gender dynamics of such systems. The aim of this work is to help wild meat research and policy to create effective and equitable outcomes. As part of this work, I have collaborated with the Centre for Biodiversity Conservation Research at the University of Ghana to map women’s roles and influence in Ghana, focusing on the supply chain of a wild meat market in the city of Kumasi in the Ashanti region.
Before starting my DPhil, I worked as a Research Consultant from 2020-2022, primarily working for the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) on the WILDMEAT Project, as well as for WWF and the University of Oxford. I was also a Visiting Research Fellow at ICCS in the Department of Biology at the University of Oxford in 2022. I have a BSc in Environmental Geography and a Masters in Environmental Economics and Environmental Management with Distinction from the University of York. After completing my Masters, I worked for a local NGO in Sri Lanka as a Research Assistant before becoming the Research Intern for the IUCN SSC Pangolin Specialist Group.
I am very grateful to be funded by the Valerie Mitchell Scholarship with WildCRU and Lady Margaret Hall.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Trading species to extinction: evidence of extinction linked to the wildlife trade
Trading species to extinction: evidence of extinction linked to the wildlife trade
The link between unsustainable harvest of species for the wildlife trade and extinction is clear in some cases, but little is known about the number of species across taxonomic groups that have gone extinct because of trade-related factors, or future risks for traded species. We conducted a rapid review of published articles and species assessments on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species with the aim of recording examples of extinctions that were attributed to trade. We found reports of extinctions linked, at least in part, to wildlife trade for 512 unique taxa. These include 296 reports of global extinctions, 25 extinctions in the wild, and 191 local extinctions. The majority of global/in the wild extinctions linked to trade (232) involved ray-finned fishes, primarily due to predation by introduced commercial species. Seventy-one of the 174 reported local extinctions of animal taxa linked to trade were mammals. Twenty-two global/in the wild extinctions and 16 local extinctions of plants were reportedly linked to trade. One fungal species was reported locally extinct due to over-harvesting for trade. Furthermore, 341 species, were reported to be near-extinct linked to trade, 270 of which were animals, including several high-profile megafauna. Extinctions were linked to direct harvesting and/or indirect threats such as bycatch or invasive species introduced for trade, but often it was not possible to determine the relative role of trade-related threats in extinctions. Our results highlight the need for better data collection on trade-related extinction risk to understand its impacts and to inform more effective wildlife trade policy.