ABSTRACT
Green criminologists have successfully demonstrated that a variety of harms that non-human animals endure are a result of human activities. Many of the more compelling descriptions of harm in the literature focus on poaching and wildlife trafficking. While it is clear that a significant volume of wildlife harm is a direct result of humans, indirect consequences – that is, those that are a result of ecological destruction – also exist but have not yet been sufficiently examined by green criminologists. Importantly, ecological destruction feeds back to ecosystems and causes further ecosystem and wildlife harm. In the present discussion, we draw attention to these indirect wildlife harms that stem from ecological disorganization through systemic feedback and how indirect wildlife and ecosystem harms intersect within the context of ecosystems to produce secondary ecological harms. In exploring the analysis of secondary ecological harms, we also draw attention to the need for a political economic analysis of those harms which illustrates how wildlife harm and secondary ecological harm produce forms of ecological disorganization tied to the expansion of capitalism and the capitalist treadmill of production.
