Poaching


Poaching is the illegal hunting or capturing of wild animals, usually associated with land use rights.
Poaching was once performed by impoverished peasants for subsistence purposes and to supplement meager diets. It was set against the hunting privileges of nobility and territorial rulers.
Since the 1980s, the term "poaching" has also been used to refer to the illegal harvesting of wild plants. In agricultural terms, the term 'poaching' is also applied to the loss of soils or grass by the damaging action of feet of livestock, which can affect availability of productive land, water pollution through increased runoff and welfare issues for cattle. Stealing livestock, as in cattle raiding, classifies as theft rather than poaching.
The United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal 15 enshrines the sustainable use of all wildlife. It targets the taking of action on dealing with poaching and trafficking of protected species of flora and fauna to ensure their availability for present and future generations.

Legal aspects

In 1998, environmental scientists from the University of Massachusetts Amherst proposed the concept of poaching as an environmental crime and defined as any illegal activity that contravenes the laws and regulations established to protect renewable natural resources, including the illegal harvest of wildlife with the intention of possessing, transporting, consuming or selling it and using its body parts. They considered poaching as one of the most serious threats to the survival of plant and animal populations. Wildlife biologists and conservationists consider poaching to have a detrimental effect on biodiversity both within and outside protected areas as wildlife populations decline, species are depleted locally, and the functionality of ecosystems is disturbed.

Continental Europe

Austria and Germany refer to poaching not as theft but as intrusion into third-party hunting rights. While ancient Germanic law allowed any free man, including peasants, to hunt, especially on common land, Roman law restricted hunting to the rulers. In medieval Europe rulers of feudal territories from the king downward tried to enforce exclusive rights of the nobility to hunt and fish on the lands that they ruled. Poaching was deemed a serious crime punishable by imprisonment, but enforcement was comparably weak until the 16th century. Peasants were still allowed to continue small game hunting, but the right of the nobility to hunt was restricted in the 16th century and transferred to land ownership. The low quality of guns made it necessary to approach the game as close as. Poachers in the Salzburg region were typically unmarried men around 30 years of age and usually alone on their illegal trade.
The development of modern hunting rights is closely connected to the comparatively modern idea of exclusive private ownership of land. In the 17th and the 18th centuries, the restrictions on hunting and shooting rights on private property were enforced by gamekeepers and foresters. They denied shared usage of forests, such as resin collection and wood pasture and the peasants right to hunt and fish. However, by end of the 18th century, comparably-easy access to rifles increasingly allowed peasants and servants to poach. Hunting was used in the 18th century as a theatrical demonstration of the aristocratic rule of the land and also had a strong impact on land use patterns. Poaching not only interfered with property rights but also clashed symbolically with the power of the nobility. Between 1830 and 1848, poaching and poaching-related deaths increased in Bavaria. The German revolutions of 1848–49 were interpreted as a general permission for poaching in Bavaria. The reform of the hunting law in 1849 restricted legal hunting to rich landowners and middle classes who could pay hunting fees, which led to disappointment among the general public, who continued to view poachers favourably. Some of the frontier regions, where smuggling was important, showed especially strong resistance to that development. In 1849, the Bavarian military forces were asked to occupy a number of municipalities on the frontier with Austria. Both in Wallgau and in Lackenhäuser, in the Bavarian forest, each household had to feed and accommodate one soldier for a month as part of a military mission to quell the disturbance. The people of Lackenhäuser had several skirmishes with Austrian foresters and military that started due to poached deer. The well-armed people set against the representatives of the state were known as bold poachers.
Some poachers and their violent deaths, like Matthias Klostermayr, and Pius Walder gained notoriety and have had a strong cultural impact, which has persisted until today. Poaching was used as a dare. It had a certain erotic connotation, as in Franz Schubert's Hunter's love song,. The lyrics of Franz von Schober connected unlimited hunting with the pursuit of love. Further poaching related legends and stories ranged from the 1821 opera Freischütz to Wolfgang Franz von Kobell's 1871 story about the Brandner Kasper, a Tegernsee locksmith and poacher who struck a special deal with the Grim Reaper.
While poachers had strong local support until the early 20th century, Walder's case showed a significant change in attitudes. Urban citizens still had some sympathy for the hillbilly rebel, but the local community was much supportive.

United Kingdom

Poaching, like smuggling, has a long history in the United Kingdom. The verb poach is derived from the Middle English word pocchen literally meaning bagged, enclosed in a bag, which is cognate with "pouch".
Poaching was dispassionately reported for England in "Pleas of the Forest", transgressions of the rigid Anglo-Norman forest law. William the Conqueror, who was a great lover of hunting, established and enforced a system of forest law. This system operated outside the common law and served to protect game animals and their forest habitat from hunting by the common people of England, while reserving hunting rights for the new French-speaking Anglo-Norman aristocracy. Henceforth, hunting of game in royal forests by commoners was punishable by hanging. In 1087, the poem "The Rime of King William", contained in the Peterborough Chronicle, expressed English indignation at the severe new laws. Poaching was romanticised in literature from the time of the ballads of Robin Hood, as an aspect of the "greenwood" of Merry England. In one tale, Robin Hood is depicted as offering King Richard the Lion Heart venison from deer that was illegally hunted in the Sherwood Forest, the King overlooking the fact that this hunting was a capital offence. The widespread acceptance of the common criminal activity is encapsulated in the observation Non est inquirendum, unde venit venison that was made by Guillaume Budé in his Traitte de la vénerie. However, the English nobility and land owners were in the long term extremely successful in enforcing the modern concept of property, such as expressed in the enclosures of common land and later in the Highland Clearances, both of which were forced displacement of people from traditional land tenancies and erstwhile-common land. The 19th century saw the rise of acts of legislation, such as the Night Poaching Act 1828 and the Game Act 1831 in the United Kingdom, and various laws elsewhere.

United States

In North America, the blatant defiance of the laws by poachers escalated to armed conflicts with law authorities, including the Oyster Wars of the Chesapeake Bay and the joint US-British Bering Sea Anti-Poaching Operations of 1891 over the hunting of seals. In the Chesapeake Bay in the 1930s one of the biggest threats to waterfowl was local poachers using flat boats with swivel cannons that killed entire flocks with one shot.
Violations of hunting laws and regulations concerning wildlife management, local or international wildlife conservation schemes constitute wildlife crimes that are typically punishable. The following violations and offenses are considered acts of poaching in the US:
In 2008, efforts to combat rhino poaching in Kruger National Park were bolstered by a new aerial surveillance solution in cooperation with the Ichikowitz Family Foundation and South African National Parks. A specialist reconnaissance aircraft, The Seeker Seabird, incorporating sophisticated surveillance technology, was introduced to accomplish this goal.
In 2015, Stephen Corry, director of the human rights group Survival International, argued that the term "poaching" has been used to criminalize the traditional subsistence techniques of indigenous peoples and to bar them from hunting on their ancestral lands when they are declared as wildlife-only zones. Corry argues that parks such as the Central Kalahari Game Reserve are managed for the benefit of foreign tourists and safari groups at the expense of the livelihoods of tribal peoples such as the Kalahari bushmen.