Wildlife Returns envisions a world in which wild species are managed, used, and traded to generate sustainable ecological and economic returns:
- Entrepreneurship – discovering wildlife opportunities
- Enterprise – generating wildlife value
- Conservation – restoring and enhancing wildlife assets
Wildlife Returns promotes market-based approaches to generating sustainable value from wildlife. This requires transdisciplinary learning and analysis on the ethics, governance, and business of wildlife management as summarised here:
- The ethics of wild use
- Issues: Values, beliefs, and perceptions about the role of wildlife in society, and attitudes to the harvesting and trade of wildlife influence how we govern and manage wild species and their habitats
- Disciplines: Philosophy, Politics
- Topics: Wildness and sustainable development, wild versus domesticated foods, attitudes to hunting and fishing, communal versus individual ownership of wildlife assets, living with wildlife
- The governance of wildlife use
- Issues: Policies, laws, and regulations at all levels shape the way in which wildlife is manged and how it contributes to human betterment
- Disciplines: Economics, Law, Political Science, Public Policy
- Topics: Wildlife and habitat ownership, multi-use models across wild landscapes, enabling policies and regulations for wildlife markets, standards for wildlife use, agreements for international trade
- The business of wildlife use
- Issues: Liberalised wildlife markets can support well-functioning value chains in sectors such as tourism, hunting, fishing, and foraging delivering a vase array of wildlife-based goods and services for human betterment
- Disciplines: Business, Finance, Law, Marketing, Entrepreneurship
- Topics: Promoting wildlife entrepreneurship, building and financing wildlife enterprises, strengthening global wildlife-based value chains, marketing wildlife products, scaling up wildlife returns
The Vinson Centre at the University of Buckingham is the ideal home for Wildlife Returns as the Centre “challenges received wisdom and rethinks economics and entrepreneurship as a single subject furthering our understanding and pursuit of trade and enterprise in a free society.” With Wildlife Returns, Vinson has a new programme on wildlife-based trade and enterprise.