The Albatross Lecture 2025: Dr Jared Margulies

Part of the Sustainable Futures Events collection

* **Please note this event is open to those both internal and external to The University of Manchester***

Join us on the 23rd January 2025 to hear a keynote presentation from Dr Jared Margulies, Assistant Professor at The University of Alabama and author of The Cactus Hunters: Desire and Extinction in the Illicit Succulent Trade. the talk will be followed by lunch, a panel discussion and will end with a tour of Manchester Museum's WILD exhibition.

Please note spaces for the WILD tour exhibition are limited. We will email those attending with more information. Select Yes when registering to express your interest in the tour.

Talk description:

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.

Full agenda to be confirmed shortly.

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