The Boone and Crockett Club this week unveiled the results of a 5-year study into the scale, motivations for, and various costs of wildlife poaching in America. The upshot? B&C pegged the “conservation cost” of illegal wildlife killing in the U.S. at $1.4 billion annually.
The study, part of the club’s Poach and Pay Project, indicates that more than 95 percent of wildlife crimes go unreported and unprosecuted. Those relatively few poachers who do face justice often walk with minor fines and other penalties. That inconsequential punishment provides little deterrence for either serial or opportunistic poachers.
Research conducted by Jon Gassett of the Wildlife Management Institute and Kristie Blevins, a criminologist with Eastern Kentucky University, aimed to quantify the various costs of poaching, estimating the number of animals taken illegally, the loss of opportunity for legal, license-buying hunters, uncollected license revenue for state wildlife agencies, and the replacement cost of trophy animals.
Because poaching is on the continuum of other crimes, from theft and larceny to domestic violence and murder, its study is suited to the science of criminality, and Gassett and Blevins applied established criminological research methods to not only quantify the extent of poaching in America, but to tease out the reasons people poach.
The average restitution cost of a whitetail deer, according to the research, is $2,171. The restitution cost for a trophy-class elk can be as high as $30,000.
In a press conference Tuesday in Washington, D.C., Boone and Crockett Club’s chief executive officer Tony A. Schoonen noted that quantifying the amount of poaching in America is only part of the club’s interest in supporting this study. He hopes the results elevate the public standing of hunters among non-hunters, who often confuse legal hunting and poaching. It’s a differentiation that anti-hunting groups often intentionally obscure, as they conflate the activities of poachers with those of legal hunters.
The Boone and Crockett Club is a leading voice for ethical, legal, and restrained hunting in North America, and often recalls that managed, legal hunting is responsible for the return of depleted wildlife populations in America a century ago.
“It’s critical to differentiate between legal, fair-chase hunters and poachers,” Schoonen said. “Poaching is stealing from all of us, whether you hunt or not, because wildlife belongs to all of us.”
Only 4 Percent of Poaching Incidents Are Detected
One of the headlines of the research is the extremely low detection rate of poaching. Gassett and Blevins used a statistical model that indicates the mean detection rate is about 4 percent, with a 95 percent confidence that the detection rate falls somewhere between 2.66 and 5.41 percent.
For comparison, the detection rate for aggravated assault is about 57 percent, for rape and sexual assault 46 percent, burglary and robbery around 42 percent. Detection rates for larceny and theft are about 25 percent.
One reason poaching remains largely undetected is because it’s a “cryptic crime,” noted Schoonen. Areas where it happens are often rural or backcountry areas with few witnesses, and there’s often little forensic evidence to aid investigators. Poachers often own or are highly familiar with the land where they poach. Poaching often happens at night. And the researchers stressed that the limited number and huge duty areas for game wardens makes patrolling and enforcement of poaching difficult.
Comprehending the “dark figure” of poaching, or the amount of poaching that’s not detected or reported, is essential not only for enforcement and resource allocation, say the researchers, but also for assessing the real costs of wildlife crimes.
“These undetected violations translate into millions of dollars of lost replacement costs, fines, and penalties—resources that could otherwise support wildlife conservation,” note the researchers. “In addition to these direct financial losses, undetected poaching diminishes public trust, reduces hunting participation, and undermines federal conservation funding derived from excise taxes on outdoor-related equipment.”
Gassett and Blevins based their research on interviews with landowners, game wardens, hunters, and prosecutors across eight states selected based on geographic variability, population density, land ownership patterns, and availability of big-game species. States participating in the study were Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, and Pennsylvania.
Researchers distributed email surveys to 80,000 licensed hunters and another 80,000 landowners in the subject states, and over 1,200 active conservation officers were also surveyed in an effort to get a comprehensive view of attitudes about and estimations of the prevalence of poaching.
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The study identified eight motivations of poaching, ranging from poaching for trophy parts of an animal to peer pressure to subsistence to opportunistic poaching. Other motivations are because of a family or cultural tradition, “backdoor poaching” of wildlife on a poacher’s own property, ego-based poaching, and commercial poaching for financial gain.
Researchers intended to include self-reported perspectives from self-described poachers themselves, but unsurprisingly got very few responses from surveys and follow-up interview requests.
Replacement Costs of Poached Animals
The study considered the fiscal impacts created by the loss of penalties and the replacement costs for poached animals to arrive at the $1.4 billion annual “conservation cost” of poaching. The figure is calculated by using states’ restitution for poached big-game animals and the loss of hunting-license revenue, which has a knock-on effect of loss of federal excise-tax dollars to states.
States’ restitution penalties are established to deter poaching, but also to ensure the wildlife agency is reimbursed for the loss of a poached trophy animal. The average restitution cost of a whitetail deer, according to the research, is $2,171. The restitution cost for a trophy-class elk can be as high as $30,000.
“Assuming a 100 percent conviction rate and using official citation data from each of the subject states and minimum fines and replacement costs for illegal take of big game from all 50 states allows us to develop a per-state average and a national-level estimate of conservation losses due to the illegal take of big game,” say the authors.
At the 5 percent detection rate, researchers say, America loses $1.435 billion annually to big-game poaching. The state-specific average loss is $28.7 million annually, including $6 million in lost fines and another $22.6 million in the replacement cost for poached animals.
To put this “conservation cost” in context, the average financial loss from illegal take exceeds the 2023 Wildlife Restoration final apportionment for two-thirds of the states as well as the 2023 gross revenue from hunting license sales in 39 states. In other words, poaching is twice the size of legal hunting, measured in economic terms.
America loses $1.435 billion annually to big-game poaching.
“The total calculated conservation cost for the U.S. resulting from the undetected levels of illegal take of big game was more than the 2023 Wildlife Restoration apportionment ($1.185 billion) for all 50 states combined,” say the study authors. “It is also greater than the total gross revenue from 2023 hunting license sales in the U.S. ($1.015 billion).”
At this week’s press conference, B&C’s Schoonen noted an additional, unquantifiable, impact of poaching: reduced trust in the non-hunting public that legal hunting can adequately manage wildlife in America.
Increasing Detection — and Penalties
The report details strategies for both increasing the detection rate of poaching in America and also for reducing opportunities for poachers and increasing penalties for those convicted of wildlife crimes.
Researchers cite criminological and behavioral theories that observe that individuals commit crimes when the rewards outweigh the costs of their actions. This “general deterrence theory” suggests that harsher criminal sentences and peer shaming may be effective ways to deter would-be poachers. But they also note that increasing penalties are secondary considerations if potential poachers are unconcerned about being caught.
“Scholars have consistently recommended that the best approach to decreasing illegal wildlife take and other wildlife crimes involves decreasing motivation by increasing the likelihood of apprehension,” the report says. “Although this requires additional resources for a larger workforce, the highest-rated suggestion for accomplishing this task is the increased visibility of wildlife law enforcement officers.”
The report recommends increasing game wardens’ visible routines and anti-poaching patrols and employing targeted enforcement strategies, such as covert operations, surveillance, and stings.
Schoonen noted that many of the report’s recommendations will be used to develop a set of best-practices and model legislation that could be drafted into state laws and management recommendations for state wildlife agencies.
Specific proposals include developing uniform restitution and penalties based on the ecological value and rarity of poached animals, simplifying poaching statutes, elevating poaching from misdemeanor to felony status, developing “proportional restitution” including confiscation of equipment used in the crime, investing in modern surveillance tools, training prosecutors and judges to elevate wildlife crimes to the level of comparable offenses, and improvement and full implementation of the International Wildlife Violators Compact.
But the report also suggests that the community of legal hunters can play a role in both deterrence and punishment.
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“Consider public ‘naming and shaming’ tactics, where legally permissible, to reinforce social deterrents,” say the authors. Social media, which the authors note can create a climate that rewards trophy poaching, can also play a powerful role in public shaming of poachers.
“It’s on us as legal, ethical hunters to educate the public and to publicly shame perpetrators,” said Schoonen. “Legal hunters can elevate the stigma against poaching. This study has proven that poaching is not a victimless crime. We lose individual wildlife, a public resource with a high conservation cost.”
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