Rosemary Collard is a human geographer and political ecologist whose research aims to develop political economic explanations for defaunation and extinction. She combines primary field research with critical theory – especially feminist and postcolonial political economy, environmental justice, ecofeminism, and animal studies – to investigate how colonialism and capitalism have shaped animal life and relations between people and animals, especially wildlife. She researches the global exotic pet trade, which is the basis of her book, Animal Traffic (Duke University Press, 2020) and the political economy of extraction in endangered species habitat, especially of woodland caribou.