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Concept
Poaching
Summary
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, not as 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.
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.
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.
Official source
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