Protected in Law, Vulnerable in Reality: A Critical Study of Enforcement Deficits in Conservation Frameworks

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-725-5_11How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Protected Areas; Wildlife Conservation; Enforcement Gap; Poaching; Wildlife Crime; SDG 15

Abstract

The most evident element of legal undertaking of the state in the respect of conservation of wildlife is protected areas, which represent the guarantee to the safety of species and habitats given to them by their statement and due regulation. Conservation regimes lead to the creation of national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, and conservation reserves under the hope that conservation will be legally safeguarded which will translate into effective biodiversity protection. Nevertheless, poaching, illicit animal trade, encroachment, and organized crime of animal’s remains widespread in the areas, are resulting in a serious lack of environment qualification between the conservation law and the conservation reality. The current study is grounded on the fundamental issue that species are still threatened in an area that is supposedly covered by a legislative jurisdiction to be protected. The paper is an inquiry into why and how enforcement systems of conservation regimes do not translate into substantial protection of the wildlife. It questions the legal framework that regulates the process relating to the protection areas to know whether there are loopholes in the design of the enforcement procedures, the severity of the punishment, the procedures by which they should be investigated and prosecute, or how these laws are interpreted and adjudicated in court.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Manvendra Singh
AU  - Kushagra Kulshrestha
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/07/07
TI  - Protected in Law, Vulnerable in Reality: A Critical Study of Enforcement Deficits in Conservation Frameworks
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Conceptualizing Legal Framework and Policies for Domestic Animal and Wildlife Conservation: Issues and Challenges in Hybrid Mode (ICAR 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 121
EP  - 131
SN  - 2667-128X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-725-5_11
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-725-5_11
ID  - Singh2026
ER  -