Valorisation of Madagascar’s Wildlife Trade and Wildlife Tourism: What Are the Conservation Benefits?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Overall, the paper presents the economic aspects of both wildlife trade and wildlife-based tourism, and this is important to show how both aspects can contribute to income generating and scholar's knowledge.

To make it balance between economic benefits and conservation benefits, authors should also provide any insights from local perspectives in terms of efforts to conserve biodiversity - endemic plants and animals in Madagascar. At the same time people perceptions on willingness to pay for the services provided by the nature - plants and animals. Is the animal and plant trade taken from the nature? Or they are cultivated-based of commodities. This is important to present in this paper.

Providing information above will improve the content of the paper not to push on the economic benefits, but also to provide approaches that required to conserve the biodiversity.

Author Response

Please see attached document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This article is a well-written and comprehensive contribution to the field. The research is impressive and the methodology is sound, which adds significant credibility to the findings. The authors’ focus on Madagascar, an island in the Global South, effectively addresses an important gap in the literature regarding research in this region. In my view, the author's innovative approach also sheds light on an important subject matter in conservation (the juxtaposition of protection vs profit) and offers valuable insights for both researchers and practitioners. The authors’ thoughtful discussion of the implications of their findings not only enriches the scholarly discourse but also provides practical guidance for those working in the field. Further, the author's use of figures and tables greatly aids in understanding the research results. These visual elements are well-designed and effectively complement the text. Overall, this article is a valuable addition to the academic literature. It advances our understanding of the topic and demonstrates a high level of scholarship. I would recommend it for publication.

Author Response

Please see attached document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

1. While developing the literature review, the authors discussed the relevant studies on the two types of in-come generators for the conservation, which is good. However, the literature review did not accurately summarize what were the important findings of the existing studies on wildlife tourism and wildlife trade.

2. It will be better to dry up the introduction a bit. Some of the data(in 1.2 & 1.3) could have been streamlined because they illustrate the same issue, such as the estimation of economic value of tourism. What really matters is what the data say and what research gaps there are on the topics about wildlife tourism and wildlife trade.

3. In the methodology section, the authors should include more information on the estimating tools and give a clearer definition of ‘ecotourist’. It would be better to give a precise definition or evaluation system: what is an ecotourist? The article's statement about the reference to Wollenberg et al. is vague and can be incomprehensible to the reader. Why is the percentage of 17% appropriate in this paper? 

4. The authors discussed wildlife tourism in the literature review, but in the methodology section, the authors discussed ecotourism. Can ecotourism and wildlife tourism be equated in terms of their definitions? Will all ecotourism activities be related to wildlife tourism? A clearer description should be given.

5. What are the reasons that make it difficult to obtain primary data? Why did the article obtain trade prices of wildlife from the published literature?

6. Could the correlation of the price structure of plants and animals be found as a suitable reference? The analogy in the article does not sound scientific.

7. With regard to the interpretation of the data, it should be more focused and there should be a corresponding analysis of the causes. For example, year 2010 in Figure 2 is a very special year and why is the data for this year the lowest? Similarly, year 2016 in Figure 6 is also a significant year. The article should give an analysis.

8. The article mentioned that "an estimated total of US$72,300 was generated from the trade between 2007-2018 and potentially made available to people within local communities", which implies that the authors believed that the revenues flowed into the communities. However, until the end of the article, it is difficult to discover how these revenues benefit the communities.

On the one hand, the authors did not utilize the data obtained to target the research theme "What Are the Conservation Benefits". On the other hand, could the so-called "negative impacts" and "costs" faced by the conversation be deduced from the available data? No reliable and rigorous logic was found. The discussion should be further expanded, with more links to existing literature and the data obtained.

Author Response

Please see attached document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

This is a useful attempt to valorise wildlife trade in a sensitive biodiversity country - however the paper does not attempt to set out understand the problems in legal wildlife trade (eg what is sustainable wildlife trade, does it mask an illegal trade), understand where the revenues go to from wildlife trade (illegal and legal) and ecotourism and what externalities could be driving both ecotourism and wildlife trade (eg emerging wildlife markets such as South Asia) (eg political situation and internal transportation requirements for ecotourism). 

The paper would benefit from a wider reference to the illegal trade from Madagascar (eg TRAFFIC reports, CITES Appendix II discussions in the Animals Committee and recommendations on Malagasy exports) - it would also benefit from a wider discussion on the revenues going to local people from sustainable use (eg CAMPFIRE in southern Africa) and ecotourism and the illegal trade.  

Whilst it is understandable that there is a lack of good economic data from Madagascar there are other reports from countries on these impacts which could be referenced (eg illegal trade: Chng et al 2023; UNWTO definitions of ecotourism framework and good practice and is this being followed in Madagascar; economics of wildlife trade Prasad 2022, monetorising illegal trade: Conservation Strategy Fund)

The discussion does not delve into analysing what happens with the ecotourism/wildlife trade conflict in other countries eg South Africa, Namibia, Kenya where there have been good data and analytics to assess this - these studies could be used as a comparator  for this study.  Instead there is one anecdote on a hotel in northeast Madagascar rather than an assessment of the financial issues in Madagascar.

The paper also does not seem to have been proof read with a number of spelling issues and mistakes such as Fig 3 being the wrong title, references 53-59 not being used.

There is an important paper here but it needs a lot more work to understand how other authors have approached this analysis in other countries and utilise the data and information that organisations such as TRAFFIC, CITES and UNWTO have used in their analysis of the Madagascar trade issue. 

This paper seems to have been rushed and whilst the idea is good it suffers at present from a lack of analysis of the issues involved, case studies from other countries, data and insight from international organisations such as CITES, TRAFFIC - consequently whilst it is understandable that the data may be lacking (particularly in how financials filter down to the village level), there is very little discussion on what happens in other countries, analysing if these frameworks could be adopted in Madagascar and if not why not.  The paper also suffers from not being co authored or at least checked with Malagasy experts of which there are many cited in the references.

I think the author should be encouraged to further develop this paper by doing a wider literature review, work with Malagasy experts on the paper, work with an economist to do a analysis of the data that exists.  At present it merely uses CITES data at a very basic level to understand wildlife levels without understanding the impacts on the illegal trade or event the recommendations from the CITES Committees that have produced numerous recommendations on the trade from Madagascar over the past 20 years.

a spell check on hyphenated words would be useful

Author Response

Please see attached document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 4 Report

I'm happy with the additions of text and clarifications of impact of tourism v wildlife trade