Blood does not buy goodwill: allowing culling increases poaching of a large carnivore

Abstract

Quantifying environmental crime and the effectiveness of policy interventions is difficult because perpetrators typically conceal evidence. To prevent illegal uses of natural resources, such as poaching endangered species, governments have advocated granting policy flexibility to local authorities by liberalizing culling or hunting of large carnivores. We present the first quantitative evaluation of the hypothesis that liberalizing culling will reduce poaching and improve population status of an endangered carnivore. We show that allowing wolf (Canis lupus) culling was substantially more likely to increase poaching than reduce it. Replicated, quasi-experimental changes in wolf policies in Wisconsin and Michigan, USA, revealed that a repeated policy signal to allow state culling triggered repeated slowdowns in wolf population growth, irrespective of the policy implementation measured as the number of wolves killed. The most likely explanation for these slowdowns was poaching and alternative explanations found no support. When the government kills a protected species, the perceived value of each individual of that species may decline; so liberalizing wolf culling may have sent a negative message about the value of wolves or acceptability of poaching. Our results suggest that granting management flexibility for endangered species to address illegal behaviour may instead promote such behaviour.

La gestión del lobo en España. Controversias científicas en torno a su caza

“…En una revisión bibliográfica sobre la caza de los carnívoros para su conservación, Treves (2009) concluye que el furtivismo no parece reducirse cuando los carnívoros son considerados como especies cinegéticas. En 2016 se ha publicado un estudio que sugiere que la persecución legal del lobo no reduce, sino que aumenta, la caza ilegal (Chapron y Treves, 2016). La guerra en los tribunales que mantienen distintos sectores relacionados con el lobo en el Medio Oeste americano ha hecho que las poblaciones de Wisconsin y Michigan hayan sido desprotegidas y vueltas a proteger varias veces en los últimos años.…”

Can We Sustainably Harvest Ivory?

“…Despite whaling regulation after WWII, illegal whaling continued for decades [3]. The introduction of wolf culls in the USA actually increased poaching activities [4] while one-off ivory sales in 1999 and 2008 did nothing to halt elephant poaching. Governance issues over the ivory supply chains, including stockpiling, make enforcing quotas challenging if not impossible [5,6].…”

When is it acceptable to kill a strictly protected carnivore? Exploring the legal constraints on wildlife management within Europe’s Bern Convention

“…As phrased here, the beneficial effect of allowing this killing will be enhanced if the killing is done by rural residents (rather than state agents) within a framework that approximates normal hunting as much as possible. A key aspect that has emerged in recent discussions about the pros and cons of lethal control concerns the need to demonstrate a utility of allowing control (Chapron and Treves 2016;Treves et al 2016;Vucetich et al 2017). These authors have focused on single or narrow dimensions of utility, which do not recognise most of the diverse aspects outlined above.…”

“…The idea that illegal killing of wildlife will decrease as a result of allowing legal lethal control and / or hunting is widespread in the literature, although it is often posited without due consideration of the diverse motivations that underlie illegal killing (Chapron and Treves 2016), or the diversity of social and institutional contexts (Olson et al 2015). For example, it is not only among poachers or potential poachers that management is seeking to gain tolerance as there are many other legal political pathways by which people can undermine conservation goals (Skogen and Krange 2003;Skogen et al 2013).…”