, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto 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.
Continental Europe at the Riederstein, near
Baumgartenschneid, Tegernsee. The remains of a poacher, who had never returned from a hunting expedition in 1861, were found at the site in 1897. 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. 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. 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 ("It is not to be inquired, whence comes the 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 (
1 & 2 Will. 4. c. 32) in the United Kingdom, and various laws elsewhere.
United States , a
bald eagle in
Alaska survived a poaching attempt in the
Juneau Raptor Center mews on 15 August 2015 , 1915. 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: • Hunting, killing or collecting wildlife that is listed as
endangered by the
IUCN and protected by law such as the
Endangered Species Act, the
Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 and international treaties such as
CITES. • Capturing wildlife outside legal hours and outside the
hunting season; This hunting method is illegal in California,
Virginia,
Connecticut, Florida,
Michigan,
New Hampshire,
Maine,
Texas, and
Tennessee. 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. == Motives ==