This is a joint event with the Oxford Martin Programme on the Illegal Wildlife Trade

The illegal wildlife trade undermines our global commitment to protect threatened biodiversity. Being a key destination in Asia, China needs to play a leading role in reducing demand for illegal wildlife products so as to reverse the unsustainable trend.

During this talk Ming will discuss ongoing projects that his team are working on from Guangzhou, where they are based, which is widely considered as the epicentre of illegal wildlife trade in Mainland China. He will draw on the team's interdisciplinary approaches to tackle these complex illegal wildlife trade challenges.

Partnering with local and international groups (including Oxford Martin Programme on the Illegal Wildlife Trade and Wildlife Conservation Society), they hope to develop data-informed strategies by understanding the domestic trends and drivers of wildlife trade in China, the dynamics of local medicinal and wildlife markets, and the motivation and behaviour of local and overseas Chinese consumers of wildlife products.

About the speaker

Ming is an Oxford Martin Visiting Fellow on the Oxford Martin Programme on the Illegal Wildlife Trade and a trained conservation scientist. He defended his PhD thesis at the University of California, San Diego, USA. He completed two fellowships from Columbia and Yale Universities (Earth Institute) and Princeton University (Woodrow Wilson School).

Taking a break from academia, he worked as a data scientist in an educational technology company in New York City. Late 2017, he started a prestigious professorship position at the Department of Ecology and Evolution, School of Life Sciences at Sun Yat-sen University, China. His team takes interdisciplinary and novel approaches to address illegal wildlife trade and sustainability issues in China.