A Place-based Network Approach to Wildlife Poaching: Integrating Network Analysis and Crime Scripting

Wildlife poaching poses a serious threat to global biodiversity and species survival, yet effective prevention remains challenging due to its complex spatial and behavioral dynamics. Addressing this multifaceted problem requires interdisciplinary approaches that integrate crime science with geospatial analysis. Rooted in environmental criminology, crime scripting provides a framework for understanding the sequential processes of crime commission, while network analysis offers a place-based perspective for examining how illegal activities are spatially organized. Using poaching in Pù Mát National Park, Vietnam, as a case study, this study constructed a spatially explicit place network dataset structured by four crime-script stages: Preparation, Pre-activity, Activity, and Post-activity. Spatial social network analysis (SSNA) metrics were used to examine network structure and spatial characteristics, including structural density, spatial compactness, directional entropy, and movement distances. Community structure was detected using the Louvain algorithm, and centrality measures identified influential hubs, bottlenecks, and persistent places and movements relevant for intervention prioritization. Results showed that poaching place networks were structurally sparse yet spatially diverse, exhibiting strong community structure and stage-specific spatial patterns. Although simple in structure, poaching activities could be strategically organized through locally structured place-groups, spatial partitioning, brokerage places and movements that facilitate coordination across stages. By integrating crime scripting with SSNA for the first time, this study advanced spatial understanding of wildlife crime and provided actionable insights for place-based intervention. The proposed analyses package is transferable to other conservation crimes contexts to support targeted, stage-specific prevention strategies beyond isolated hotspot interventions.