Speaking of Science: During war, who speaks for animals?

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By Clare Fieseler

A group of wildlife biologists are calling for a new Geneva Convention that protects animals during war. The scientists' interloping in international law started when they published a peer-reviewed conservation study with a gruesome "Supplementary Materials" file.

Six skinned Dorcas gazelles hang from the side of a pickup truck, forming a skirt of flesh around a grenade launcher mounted on the flatbed. In another image, a dead fennec fox — with its trademark cartoonish ears — appears propped up behind an assault rifle, as if it's shooting it. These are among the 20 gory images, all scraped from Libyan and Egyptian social media, that make up the surprising Supplemental Materials file of the study, published last year by the journal Conservation Letters.

The study's authors made a case for addressing the loss of wildlife documented by social media and expert surveys in the war-torn Sahara-Sahel desert ecosystem. Most researchers stop there, letting others usher recommendations like these into law or policy.

"I'm not a lawyer. I'm a scientist," said Sarah Durant, a co-author and ecologist at the Zoological Society of London. "But we wanted to get more engagement from scientists with the United Nation's International Law Commission."

This week, Durant and a core group of her co-authors from the Sahara-Sahel wildlife study published something even bolder: an open letter to governments to hold the "military industry" legally accountable for destroying biodiversity.

They say the conflict-driven killing of animals should be treated as a "war crime," with all the legal instruments the Geneva Conventions use in international courts.

The scientists tracking animals in conflict areas have started speaking on their behalf. But what they want is for the international community to speak for animals, in perpetuity and with legal teeth.

The biodiversity-inclusive draft of a fifth Geneva Convention treaty will be considered this month when the U.N. International Law Commission meets. The four existing Geneva Convention treaties regulate the conduct of war and standardize, among other things, the treatment of prisoners.

Not all scientists are confident that international courts are the best route to protect biodiversity.

"Warfare is a breakdown of social agreements. And it's amazing that some of the (existing) Geneva Conventions have been able to work," said Erle Ellis, an ecologist at the University of Maryland in Baltimore County. "Even the U.S. has not always upheld the Geneva Convention agreements, like with prisoners."

This image of a Fennec fox (Vulpes zerda) with an assault rifle was posted on social media and was later published by researchers in 2018 and 2013 as evidence of wildlife massacres in the Sahara-Sahel associated to war and conflict. (provided by Jose Carlos Brito)

The concept of ecological destruction as a war crime is not new.

In 2004, President George W. Bush listed Saddam Hussein's calculated draining of Iraq's expansive marshes as among the official reasons for the U.S. invasion. In July 2004, at Hussein's arraignment, an Iraqi judge charged him with seven crimes, among which was draining of the country's marshes, a national treasure and the Middle East's most critical habitat for migrating birds.

What's new, according to the letter's authors, is the way that informal conflict is indirectly cutting away at nature's margins.

The 2011 Libyan crisis, for example, involved no strategic, retribution-driven destruction of nature. Instead, surging violence "flooded the region with arms and soldiers," said Durant. Gruesome pictures posted on Facebook made clear that rampant forms of unregulated hunting was linked to militarization across the region.

Should the United Nations' courts hold militias accountable for the demise of a desert gazelle?

This group of wildlife biologists say yes. Increasingly, they're on the front lines collecting the best evidence — from sand dunes and on Twitter — of war's ecological cost.

Author's note: Because of a copy-writing error that changed "meters" to "miles," last week's Speaking of Science newsletter contained a mistake. Deep-dwelling sharks can mate and find food at depths that exceed 700 meters underwater. Thank you to our readers who caught that error.