The Albatross Lecture 2025
with Dr Jared Margulies
Will harsher sentencing laws, criminalization, and punishment stop the illegal wildlife trade?
Dr Jared Margulies will look at how conservation justice can be more effective in preventing harm as part of a keynote presentation at this year’s Albatross Lecture, hosted by Sustainable Futures at The University of Manchester.
An Assistant Professor at The University of Alabama, Dr Margulies is also author of The Cactus Hunters: Desire and Extinction in the Illicit Succulent Trade, and will draw on past and current research on illegal wildlife trade in ornamental plants in a variety of international contexts.
The talk will be followed by lunch and a panel discussion, followed by a tour of our Wild exhibition. Please note spaces for the Wild tour are limited. Express your interest in the tour when registering for the lecture.
Full details of the keynote presentation can be found below.
Lessons on conservation justice in the illegal wildlife trade
Global Illegal wildlife trade presents a critical conservation and social development challenge. Many countries and conservation advocates now seek harsher sentencing laws, criminalization, and punishment for people guilty of wildlife trafficking to stop it. Drawing on Dr Margulies’ past and current research on illegal wildlife trade in ornamental plants in a variety of international contexts, he argues against this turn towards criminalization as a reaction to illegal wildlife trade and instead for an approach rooted in conservation justice. Through examples from the global illegal cactus and succulent trade, alongside ongoing research in the illegal trade in endangered succulents in South Africa and the carnivorous Venus flytrap in North Carolina, USA, he suggests how criminalization in conservation leads to social harms that may further perpetuate ecological damage. This talk advocates for ways to reduce these harms drawing our attention to the entwined struggles for social and ecological justice.