Poaching

For other uses, see Poaching (disambiguation).

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Brass Plaque on door at Tremeddafarm, Zennor, Cornwall, England. It reads: Take notice that as of from today's date poachers shall be shot on first sight and if practicable questioned afterwards. By order: J.R. Bramble, Head Gamekeeper to His Grace the Duke of Gumby. 1st November 1868

Poaching is the unlawful or illegal taking of wild plants or animals, such as through hunting, harvesting, fishing, or trapping. The law concerned may be a law of property, of regulation, or of local or international conservation and wildlife management. Violations of hunting laws and regulations are normally punishable by law and, collectively, such violations are known as poaching. By contrast, stealing or killing domestic animals (such as "cattle rustling") or crops is considered to be theft, not poaching.

Plant poaching is also a public issue due to a decrease in plant wildlife. A prominent example, from the United States, is the removal of ginseng growing in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It is estimated that wild ginseng plants are worth more than $260–365 per pound (dried) on the black market.

History

Poaching, like smuggling, has a long counter-cultural history.

It was dispassionately reported for England in "Pleas of the Forest", transgressions of the rigid Anglo-Norman Forest Law.

Poaching was romanticized in literature from the time of the ballads of Robin Hood, as an aspect of the "greenwood" of Merry England. Non est inquirendum, unde venit venison ("It is not to be inquired, whence comes the venison"), observed Guillaume Budé in his Traitté de la venerie.

The 19th century saw the rise of various acts of legislation, such as the Night Poaching Act 1828 and Game Act 1831 in the United Kingdom, and various laws elsewhere. In North America, the blatant defiance of the laws by poachers escalated to several armed conflicts with law authorities, including the Bannock War of 1895 (over the hunting of elk in Wyoming), the Oyster Wars of the Chesapeake Bay, and the joint US-British Bering Sea Anti-Poaching Operations of 1891 (over the hunting of seals).

Acts of poaching

In modern times poaching may be illegal and in violation because:

• The game or fish is not in season; usually the breeding season is declared as the closed season when wildlife species are protected by law.
• The poacher does not own the land he is poaching on and does not have permission from the owner to hunt on that land
• The poacher does not possess a valid permit.
• The poacher is illegally selling the animal, animal parts or plant for a profit.
• The animal is being hunted outside of legal hours.
• The hunter used an illegal weapon for that animal.
• The animal or plant is on restricted land.
• The right to hunt this animal is claimed by somebody.
• The type of bait is inhumane, e.g., food unsuitable for an animal's health.
• The means used are illegal (for example, baiting a field while hunting quail or other animals, using spotlights to stun or paralyze deer, or hunting from a moving vehicle, watercraft, or aircraft).
• The animal or plant is protected by law or has been listed as endangered (see for example the CITES Website or Endangered Species Act in the USA or the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 and similar laws/treaties).
• The animal or plant has been tagged by a researcher.

Causes

While every poacher has a different motive for their act, today the main reason is for economic and sometimes cultural purposes.

Traditional medicine

A seashell vendor in Tanzania sells to tourists seashells which have been taken from the sea alive, killing the animal inside.

The body parts of many animals, such as tigers and rhinoceroses, are believed to have certain positive effects on the human body, including increasing virility and curing cancer. These parts are sold in areas where these beliefs are practiced - mostly Asian countries including Vietnam and China - on the black market.

Traditional Chinese medicine often incorporates ingredients from all parts of plants, the leaf, stem, flower, root, and also ingredients from animals and minerals. The use of parts of endangered species (such as seahorses, rhinoceros horns, binturong and tiger bones and claws) has created controversy and resulted in a black market of poachers who hunt restricted animals. Deep-seated cultural beliefs in the potency of tiger parts are so prevalent across China and other east Asian countries that laws protecting even critically endangered species such as the Sumatran tiger fail to stop the display and sale of these items in open markets, according to a 2008 report from TRAFFIC. Popular "medicinal" tiger parts from poached animals include tiger genitals, culturally believed to improve virility, and tiger eyes.

Rhino populations face extinction because of demand in Asia (for traditional medicine and as a luxury item) and in the Middle East (where horns are used for decoration). A sharp surge in demand for rhino horn in Vietnam was attributed to rumors that the horn cured cancer, even though the rumor has no basis in science. Recent prices for a kilo of crushed rhino horn have gone for as much as $60,000, more expensive than a kilo of gold. Vietnam is the only nation which mass-produces bowls made for grinding rhino horn.

Effects on ecosystems and wildlife

Poaching has the potential to cause endangered species to go extinct, as it severely lowers the number of animals found in the wild if not stopped. For example, the number of tigers in the wild has severely declined to less than 3,500. This is caused mostly by the high price the body parts of the tiger fetches on the black market, and the belief that parts such as their bones can be used as medicine.

Fragile ecosystems can be severely impacted by the illegal killing of animals. These effects could be irreversible, and devastating. In the case of the tiger, if the species goes extinct, it could collapse an entire ecosystem. Since the tiger is a predator, the lack of tigers could cause the numbers of the animals they prey on - primarily herbavores - to increase exponentially. The increase of typically-hunted herbivores and the lack of predators in the wild could cause the amount of natural flora to diminish, and exhaust the food supply of other animals, thus destroying an entire food chain.

Addressing the problem

Main article: Game preservation

The American paddlefish is poached for its eggs

Some game wardens have made use of robotic decoy animals placed in high visibility areas to draw out poachers for arrest after the "animals" get shot.

Another initiative that seeks to protect Africa's elephant populations from poaching activities is the Tanzanian organization Africa's Wildlife Trust (AWT). Recently they have launched a .

many national and international actions taken against certain kinds of poaching and hunting. Hunting for ivory was banned in 1989, but poaching of elephants continues in many parts of Africa stricken by economic decline. The Philippines has more than 400 endangered animals, all of which are illegal to poach.

Some species, such as the sturgeon or paddlefish (aka "spoonbill catfish") are listed as species of "special concern" by the U.S. Federal government, but are only banned from fishing in a few states such as Mississippi and Texas. The species, which is being overfished for its eggs to make caviar, is still allowed to be taken in all other states.

See also

• Game law
• Ivory trade
• Oyster pirate
• Royal forest
• Tragedy of the commons
• Wildlife smuggling
• Whaling controversy

External links

• Market size of the illegal trade in animals
• Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting Poaching Paradise (Video)
• Black Market, produced by Mediastorm
• Hunting Laws Resource - List of official State Government ran Wildlife Websites
• EIA 25 yrs investigating the ivory trade, reports etc
• EIA (in the USA) reports etc
• The Confessions of a Poacher - 1890 Personal account of a real poacher from Project Gutenberg
• True Poaching Stories within the Scottish Highlands
• International Anti-Poaching Foundation - International Anti-Poaching Foundation