Biodiversity is essential for the well-being of the world but has been declining at an alarming rate in the 20th and 21st centuries. An important threat to biodiversity consists of criminal and harmful activities against the environment. Biodiversity crime refers to illicit and unlawful acts or serious harms that pressure biological entities, including individuals and populations of species and their habitats, as well as the ecosystem’s functions and the services it supports and generates. A green criminological perspective, in which environmental crimes are approached from an extended principle of harm that encompasses adverse effects on human and non-human victims, serves to understand actors, legal–illegal interfaces, and harms behind biodiversity crimes. Flora and fauna crime groups are not homogeneous but include organized crime groups, corporate crime groups, and disorganized crime groups; they utilize different approaches and become involved in different flora and fauna markets. The legal–illegal dynamics of the market facilitate the laundering of flora and fauna, and some biodiversity crimes converge with other forms of crime, including drugs, arms, and sex trafficking. The harms linked to biodiversity crimes are illustrated by forced displacement, land-grabbing, and gross human rights abuses, including forced labor, and severe threats to workers’ health and safety. Biodiversity crimes are also connected to tragic and incalculable ecological consequences, since biodiversity decline alters key processes important to the productivity and sustainability of Earth’s ecosystems, and further loss will rapidly accelerate change in ecosystem processes.
