Illegal wildlife trade networks in northeast of México, an analysis from Green Criminology

Abstract

This study analyses the illegal trafficking networks of six wildlife specimens in north-eastern Mexico in three groups of social actors: criminal groups, public servants and civilians. Semi-structured interviews were applied from 2019 to 2021 to purchasers of wildlife specimens to identify the members of each network. The information was processed in Gephi software (v. 0.9.2) to analyse the metrics of each network. The results show that these networks are considered second-level illegal networks, which depend on the social, human and economic capital of other illegal drug, human and firearms trafficking networks and are interrelated with them. Illegal wildlife trafficking is a multifactorial phenomenon with environmental, economic and social damages, so the study of networks can guide institutional actions for regulation and prevention due to the information these networks provide at the micro and macro levels.