Sloth bear cub forced to dance. (Courtesy of Wildlife SOS). Photo and caption from newswatch.nationalgeographic.com website.
Animal Poaching: Laws, Treaties, Agreements, & Definitions
Animal Poaching: Laws, Treaties, and Agreements
Immediately below are the laws, treaties, and agreements indexed on the Animal Poaching News page. With the exception of the US, I have elected not to list/index agreements that only apply to specific countries because there are way too many to include on a site such as this.
Animal Poaching: Definitions, Glossary, & Cognate Terms
This portion of the page includes the definitions of terms directly akin to animal poaching; all of them are included in the lengthy Animal Poaching News tag category index (and if you click on any of the words being defined, below, it will take you to those Animal Poaching News articles where the word is discussed/referenced). Some of these terms are used interchangeably; some are quite distinct from one another. They're included here because they all relate to the subject of worldwide animal poaching. Most of these terms are further discussed under the heading "Thoughts on What We (NAP) Do and Do Not Do," and they're keyed to the tag category labeled *admin Site Musings (found in the No Animal Poaching Forum). If you believe a critical term is missing from this list, please let me know so I can consider adding it.
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Animal Farming: It's surprising difficult to find a good definition of this term. Most revolve around the notions of factory farming and livestock farming, which suggests the mass production of livestock for wholesale and retail sale. On this site the term has been indexed as--is more akin to--"wildlife farming," which means the raising of unsustainable (wild) animals (1) for sale locally as bushmeat, (2) as an exotic pet, (3) as a trophy to be hunted and kept (in part or whole) by an individual who is unable to obtain select animals elsewhere and is thus willing to pay a high price for a rare animal, or (4) as a commodity to be sold a distance away, for a relatively high amount, typically utilized as a palliative and/or as a delicacy in some foreign land. Animal Farming here does not mean the traditional rearing of "farm animals" (cattle, chickens, pigs, goats, etc.) that have little, if any, chance of going extinct any time soon; that form of farming is considered sustainable, and it has virtually nothing to do with poaching. It is, however, the principal target of Cattle Rustling (see below).
Bounty Hunting: On this site the traditional usage of this term is what is meant--i.e., someone paid to track and kill certain "problem" animals because there's a perception that those animals are either killing one's personal (farm) animals and/or is a threat to the welfare of people living in a particular area. Many coyotes, wolves, and a host of other animals have been systematically annihilated ("culled") at different points in time because of this practice, which generally involves the positioning of sanctioned trapping devices designed to, at minimum, injure the animal in question. For this definition, see this discussion: The Realities of a Hunting Bounty. Nowadays, the term is used more in connection with the search for an individual who has escaped and/or is wanted by the authorities for one or more reasons; this is not the way the term is used or has been indexed on this site.
Bushmeat: There are numerous definitions of this term. On this site I have used/indexed it to mean basically the way Wikipedia defines it: "...meat from wild animals hunted in Africa and Asia. The term has particularly been used to refer to meat from animals in West and Central Africa. Today the term is often used to refer to a wider range of countries and especially in reference to the hunting of endangered ape species." In brief, it's the flesh of wild (game) animals (see Game Hunting, below) for human consumption--typically the consumer being someone other than the poacher(s) killing the animals--as opposed to the purchase of sustainable meats from a market or directly from a farm. Poachers will quite often sell a portion of the poached animal (like the tusks of an elephant or the horn of a rhino) to one party and the bushmeat to other parties. In the most remote parts of the planet, though, bushmeat is consumed by those who reside there, providing a significant percentage of their protein intake; and in those areas the bushmeat "trade" should be viewed not as animal poaching but as a means to survival (viz., subsistence hunting).
Canned Hunting: This term/definition is pretty straightforward, and it reflects the way it's used/indexed on the Animal Poaching News pages and throughout this site. As The Free Dictionary concisely states it, canned hunting is "a hunt for animals that have been raised on game ranches until they are mature enough to be killed for trophy collections." These sorts of ranches are frequently synonymous with the ideals inherent in Animal Farming (see above), and they operate accordingly. People are nowadays no longer readily able to go out and kill a trophy animal for their collections (or whatever), so there are farms/ranches/large private properties where those coveted (game) animals are raised for this purpose; and then, for the right price, people are able to go to those places and kill their "favorite" animal for a specified price. The areas in question are private, which means they're fenced, which means the animals remain within the boundaries and thereby have no way to escape such hunts. Occasionally it's described as ranch hunting or captive hunting. These ranches and large estates have a powerful ally in the Exotic Wildlife Association, which lobbies for their rights to do, basically, whatever they want to do on their property. It's legalized animal poaching under another name.
Cattle Rustling: In the US and in some other, Western countries we tend to think of cattle rustling as a thing of the past, something that took place in the "wild west" by cowboys and outlaws. Alas, not only is cattle rustling alive and well in the US and in other Western nations, but it's all too common throughout the world. And while the definitions vary by locale and regional context, on this site I use the one The Kenya Human Rights Commission recently (2010) came up with in order to address the ongoing problem in East Africa: "The modern, as opposed to the traditional, practice of cattle-rustling has been defined to mean, ‘the stealing or planning, organising, attempting, aiding or abetting the stealing of livestock by any person from any country or community where the theft is accompanied by dangerous weapons and/or violence'" (page 7). As I have argued elsewhere on this site, cattle rustling is every bit as bad as animal poaching--the farmers whose animals (and livelihoods) are being stolen might even argue it's worse, and in much of the world poachers and rustlers are treated in the exact same (shoot-to-kill) way--and I see no rational distinction between the two. As such, cattle rustling is used synonymously with poaching here.
Game Hunting: This is merely the hunting of game (wild animals). Often there's a distinction between "small" game and "big" game, but it's all hunting, and that distinction is pretty much a useless, arbitrary one. Game means food, but not all game hunting is for food; much of it is strictly for sport. Surprisingly, the term "game"--and what constitutes "game hunting"--varies significantly by country and region. On this site it's indexed as the killing of animals but does not include animals in water, only land animals and birds.
Piracy Fishing: Also known as "Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (or IUU) Fishing," it is "considered as a major factor undermining sustainability of fisheries" (Why Fish Piracy Persists, page 3). It's defined by the OECD--the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development--"as catches that are either not reported or misreported to national authorities or RFMOs" (regional fisheries management organisations), which are the agencies "responsible for managing fish stocks on the high seas and fish stocks which migrate through the waters of more than just a single State" (see RFMOs). The FAO regards piracy fishing to mean "...any catches that are either not reported or misreported to national authorities or RFMOs," and they further assert that "...unreported fishing takes place both within national EEZs by foreign fishing vessels and under RFMOs by vessels from state parties to the convention or co-operating parties (Why Fish Piracy Persists, page 24). In sum, it's large-scale poaching of sea animals.
Sport Hunting: Not to be confused with subsistence hunting, which is hunting for survival purposes, sport hunting is hunting for recreation, leisure, or simply for the excitement some people get by killing things. Mainly, but not always, this type of hunting is legal--that is, the hunter obtains the necessary permits and/or licenses, which means it's done in a regulated manner that adheres to seasonal, size, weight, number, catch-and-return, and other such restrictions, all of which are designed to sustain one or more species viability in the wild. The vast majority of sport hunters abide by the particular rules that are in place, and they likewise follow ethical, conservation-based guidelines; they also abhor--and sometimes work with authorities to repudiate--all forms of animal poaching. The best discussion I've seen on this topic is "Does sport hunting benefit conservation?," from 2006 (because it reflects poorly on hunters who follow the rules). It should be noted that some of this kind of hunting takes place on private property--see Canned Hunting, above--and those instances of sport hunting are consequently far less regulated, ethical, or conservation-based.
Trophy Hunting: This is a loaded term because most people believe it's still strictly synonymous with "big game hunting" or that it has to do with obtaining select body parts only--like antlers or an entire head, taken solely for mounting--and then simply discarding the dead animal's flesh. It does mean that to some--fortunately, only for an ever-declining number of--hunters. But it has additional meanings, too. The most common other meaning is to kill a "prime" animal--one highly rated due to it's size/physique/age/some particularly rare characteristic--and, in fact, many wildlife-regulating agencies that license hunting make this distinction, too (for instance, certain specimens of a given species can only be legally killed by an individual once or twice in a lifetime [within a specific locale\, and often this involves competitive lotteries and/or paying additional hunting fees, etc., to qualify). Along the same lines, when someone is arrested for animal poaching and it's determined that the animal(s) in question is, indeed, of "trophy" caliber--i.e., a prized, notably "high quality" example of that species--the fines imposed are routinely multiplied several times over in order to emphasize the egregious degree of these so-called "trophy" kills. An additional dilemma that arises is when a hunter leaves an area, or even a country, and tries to bring such a specimen "trophy" back home; and this is of course exacerbated when it happens to be an endangered species. A useful discussion of this (in the German context) can be found in "Trophy Hunting For Endangered Species," 2008.
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Animal Farming: It's surprising difficult to find a good definition of this term. Most revolve around the notions of factory farming and livestock farming, which suggests the mass production of livestock for wholesale and retail sale. On this site the term has been indexed as--is more akin to--"wildlife farming," which means the raising of unsustainable (wild) animals (1) for sale locally as bushmeat, (2) as an exotic pet, (3) as a trophy to be hunted and kept (in part or whole) by an individual who is unable to obtain select animals elsewhere and is thus willing to pay a high price for a rare animal, or (4) as a commodity to be sold a distance away, for a relatively high amount, typically utilized as a palliative and/or as a delicacy in some foreign land. Animal Farming here does not mean the traditional rearing of "farm animals" (cattle, chickens, pigs, goats, etc.) that have little, if any, chance of going extinct any time soon; that form of farming is considered sustainable, and it has virtually nothing to do with poaching. It is, however, the principal target of Cattle Rustling (see below).
Bounty Hunting: On this site the traditional usage of this term is what is meant--i.e., someone paid to track and kill certain "problem" animals because there's a perception that those animals are either killing one's personal (farm) animals and/or is a threat to the welfare of people living in a particular area. Many coyotes, wolves, and a host of other animals have been systematically annihilated ("culled") at different points in time because of this practice, which generally involves the positioning of sanctioned trapping devices designed to, at minimum, injure the animal in question. For this definition, see this discussion: The Realities of a Hunting Bounty. Nowadays, the term is used more in connection with the search for an individual who has escaped and/or is wanted by the authorities for one or more reasons; this is not the way the term is used or has been indexed on this site.
Bushmeat: There are numerous definitions of this term. On this site I have used/indexed it to mean basically the way Wikipedia defines it: "...meat from wild animals hunted in Africa and Asia. The term has particularly been used to refer to meat from animals in West and Central Africa. Today the term is often used to refer to a wider range of countries and especially in reference to the hunting of endangered ape species." In brief, it's the flesh of wild (game) animals (see Game Hunting, below) for human consumption--typically the consumer being someone other than the poacher(s) killing the animals--as opposed to the purchase of sustainable meats from a market or directly from a farm. Poachers will quite often sell a portion of the poached animal (like the tusks of an elephant or the horn of a rhino) to one party and the bushmeat to other parties. In the most remote parts of the planet, though, bushmeat is consumed by those who reside there, providing a significant percentage of their protein intake; and in those areas the bushmeat "trade" should be viewed not as animal poaching but as a means to survival (viz., subsistence hunting).
Canned Hunting: This term/definition is pretty straightforward, and it reflects the way it's used/indexed on the Animal Poaching News pages and throughout this site. As The Free Dictionary concisely states it, canned hunting is "a hunt for animals that have been raised on game ranches until they are mature enough to be killed for trophy collections." These sorts of ranches are frequently synonymous with the ideals inherent in Animal Farming (see above), and they operate accordingly. People are nowadays no longer readily able to go out and kill a trophy animal for their collections (or whatever), so there are farms/ranches/large private properties where those coveted (game) animals are raised for this purpose; and then, for the right price, people are able to go to those places and kill their "favorite" animal for a specified price. The areas in question are private, which means they're fenced, which means the animals remain within the boundaries and thereby have no way to escape such hunts. Occasionally it's described as ranch hunting or captive hunting. These ranches and large estates have a powerful ally in the Exotic Wildlife Association, which lobbies for their rights to do, basically, whatever they want to do on their property. It's legalized animal poaching under another name.
Cattle Rustling: In the US and in some other, Western countries we tend to think of cattle rustling as a thing of the past, something that took place in the "wild west" by cowboys and outlaws. Alas, not only is cattle rustling alive and well in the US and in other Western nations, but it's all too common throughout the world. And while the definitions vary by locale and regional context, on this site I use the one The Kenya Human Rights Commission recently (2010) came up with in order to address the ongoing problem in East Africa: "The modern, as opposed to the traditional, practice of cattle-rustling has been defined to mean, ‘the stealing or planning, organising, attempting, aiding or abetting the stealing of livestock by any person from any country or community where the theft is accompanied by dangerous weapons and/or violence'" (page 7). As I have argued elsewhere on this site, cattle rustling is every bit as bad as animal poaching--the farmers whose animals (and livelihoods) are being stolen might even argue it's worse, and in much of the world poachers and rustlers are treated in the exact same (shoot-to-kill) way--and I see no rational distinction between the two. As such, cattle rustling is used synonymously with poaching here.
Game Hunting: This is merely the hunting of game (wild animals). Often there's a distinction between "small" game and "big" game, but it's all hunting, and that distinction is pretty much a useless, arbitrary one. Game means food, but not all game hunting is for food; much of it is strictly for sport. Surprisingly, the term "game"--and what constitutes "game hunting"--varies significantly by country and region. On this site it's indexed as the killing of animals but does not include animals in water, only land animals and birds.
Piracy Fishing: Also known as "Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (or IUU) Fishing," it is "considered as a major factor undermining sustainability of fisheries" (Why Fish Piracy Persists, page 3). It's defined by the OECD--the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development--"as catches that are either not reported or misreported to national authorities or RFMOs" (regional fisheries management organisations), which are the agencies "responsible for managing fish stocks on the high seas and fish stocks which migrate through the waters of more than just a single State" (see RFMOs). The FAO regards piracy fishing to mean "...any catches that are either not reported or misreported to national authorities or RFMOs," and they further assert that "...unreported fishing takes place both within national EEZs by foreign fishing vessels and under RFMOs by vessels from state parties to the convention or co-operating parties (Why Fish Piracy Persists, page 24). In sum, it's large-scale poaching of sea animals.
Sport Hunting: Not to be confused with subsistence hunting, which is hunting for survival purposes, sport hunting is hunting for recreation, leisure, or simply for the excitement some people get by killing things. Mainly, but not always, this type of hunting is legal--that is, the hunter obtains the necessary permits and/or licenses, which means it's done in a regulated manner that adheres to seasonal, size, weight, number, catch-and-return, and other such restrictions, all of which are designed to sustain one or more species viability in the wild. The vast majority of sport hunters abide by the particular rules that are in place, and they likewise follow ethical, conservation-based guidelines; they also abhor--and sometimes work with authorities to repudiate--all forms of animal poaching. The best discussion I've seen on this topic is "Does sport hunting benefit conservation?," from 2006 (because it reflects poorly on hunters who follow the rules). It should be noted that some of this kind of hunting takes place on private property--see Canned Hunting, above--and those instances of sport hunting are consequently far less regulated, ethical, or conservation-based.
Trophy Hunting: This is a loaded term because most people believe it's still strictly synonymous with "big game hunting" or that it has to do with obtaining select body parts only--like antlers or an entire head, taken solely for mounting--and then simply discarding the dead animal's flesh. It does mean that to some--fortunately, only for an ever-declining number of--hunters. But it has additional meanings, too. The most common other meaning is to kill a "prime" animal--one highly rated due to it's size/physique/age/some particularly rare characteristic--and, in fact, many wildlife-regulating agencies that license hunting make this distinction, too (for instance, certain specimens of a given species can only be legally killed by an individual once or twice in a lifetime [within a specific locale\, and often this involves competitive lotteries and/or paying additional hunting fees, etc., to qualify). Along the same lines, when someone is arrested for animal poaching and it's determined that the animal(s) in question is, indeed, of "trophy" caliber--i.e., a prized, notably "high quality" example of that species--the fines imposed are routinely multiplied several times over in order to emphasize the egregious degree of these so-called "trophy" kills. An additional dilemma that arises is when a hunter leaves an area, or even a country, and tries to bring such a specimen "trophy" back home; and this is of course exacerbated when it happens to be an endangered species. A useful discussion of this (in the German context) can be found in "Trophy Hunting For Endangered Species," 2008.
NB: (1) This applies to the 2009-2013 Animal Poaching News page only, and it does NOT apply to the subsequent (2014 or later postings), which are found on the Animal Poaching News, 2014 page, and which are broken down into far fewer and different categories. (2) If any of the above laws, treaties, and agreements do not have many links, it means that I haven't yet tracked-down many poaching-related news items for them. Please check back periodically as more links are added daily (including new ones not listed here). (3) Please be aware that links to a specific grouping does not necessarily indicate that the news stories contained in each post are only about that particular grouping; it simply means that that law, treaty, or agreement is referenced within the post--it may be discussed at great length or only in passing.
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