Francis Masse

Commercial Poaching and the Securitization of Conservation Practice in Mozambique: Implications for Conservation, Territory, and Communities

I am a fourth year Ph.D. candidate with research broadly focused on the political ecologies, and geographies of conservation security, anti-poaching, and (il)legal wildlife economies. Empirically, my research is based in Mozambique and South Africa, where the rapid intensification of rhino and elephant poaching and anti-poaching responses have brought in sweeping changes to ecologies, economies, and conservation/resource governance from the local to the global scale. My Ph.D. research takes an ethnographic approach to understanding the every-day realities and dynamics of conservation security, law enforcement, anti-poaching in the Mozambican borderlands adjacent South Africa, and to a lesser extent, Tanzania. I believe in on-the-ground and sustained engagement with actors, economies, and geographies on both sides of the poaching/wildlife economy phenomenon from protected areas and their security personnel to nearby villages and the poaching economy. While not losing sight of widely-portrayed anti-poaching initiatives, this includes turning the analytical lens to the more nuanced ways that wildlife economies (legal and illegal), and conservation security and law enforcement shape everyday conservation governance, geographies, and resource politics in particular locales, across international borders, and more broadly.

Research interests: poaching, anti-poaching, wildlife trade, political ecology, conservation security, green militarization

massef@yorku.ca
@GeoFrancisMasse
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Francis_Masse