CITES Master's Course 2022-2023 Abstract Booklet

Central and East Africa are highly biodiverse regions that face threats from the illegal wildlife trade. To ensure conservation and ecological stability in these regions, it is critical to both strengthen each country’s domestic implementation of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and encourage regional cooperation on shared conservation challenges and opportunities. The class of 2022-2023 included the largest number of African scholars to participate in this program to date.

The Central and East African professionals who participated in this CITES Master's Course scholarship program work within their country’s CITES Management and Scientific Authorities or other wildlife agencies as wildlife enforcement officers, veterinarians, academic lecturers, policy and legal specialists, and forest and protected area managers. This course is a one-year graduate program involving three months of intensive academic work at the University of Andalucía, followed by nine-months of field research focusing on important wildlife conservation and CITES challenges specific to each scholar’s country. The scholars’ research culminates in a final thesis which they submit
and defend at the end of the academic year. The research abstracts presented in this booklet represent the research accomplishments of ten of these scholarship participants.