AI and Wildlife Trafficking: A Green Criminological Study of North East India

Abstract

Over the past three decades, green criminology has absorbed concepts from ecological justice, species justice and the treadmill of production thesis to widen its account of who or what counts as a victim of environmental crime. This paper extends that narrative to the role artificial intelligence (AI) now plays in the detection of, and response to, wildlife trafficking. North East India is used as the case study region, since it combines exceptional biodiversity with porous, mountainous borders and trafficking routes that run into Myanmar, China, Bangladesh and beyond. Using a qualitative design that combines doctrinal analysis of the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972, CITES, Articles 48A and 51A(g) of the Constitution and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam 2023 with a review of seizure data and published empirical studies, the paper examines environmental DNA (eDNA) forensics, predictive risk-mapping, image-recognition platforms such as Wildbook, and AI-assisted cargo screening. The findings show that these tools report roughly 86 to 96 per cent accuracy in narrow, well-defined tasks, but remain untested in the road- and river-based, live-animal trade that characterises the region, while Indian law has yet to settle the evidentiary status of AI-generated outputs. The paper concludes that AI can strengthen enforcement only if it is locally validated, preceded by evidentiary reform and co-designed with the tribal and forest-dependent communities it monitors