Hunting accelerates poaching: Study debunks myth

For decades, hunting associations and even major conservation organisations such as the IUCN and WWF have claimed that regulated, legal hunting can curb poaching.

The argument: those who are permitted to satisfy the urge to shoot legally have less reason to act illegally. A scientific study has, however, reached an explosive, contrary conclusion: hunting promotes poaching. It is therefore hardly surprising that most poachers are in reality hobby hunters holding an official licence — people who have long grown accustomed to state-sanctioned killing and perceive the boundary with illegality as merely a formality.

The effect applies not only to wolves but also to other predators such as lynxes, bears, and birds of prey. Wherever governments authorise legal culling, what increases is not acceptance of these animals but the willingness to kill them illegally as well.

Science rather than hunters’ tall tales

Research by Guillaume Chapron (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences) and Adrian Treves (University of Wisconsin, USA) demonstrates clearly: in the years during which wolf culling was permitted in the US states of Wisconsin and Minnesota, wolf population growth slowed significantly — more so than could be explained by the legally killed animals alone.

In other words: poaching closes the gap.

“The contemporary superstition that killing equals conservation has become mainstream,” says Chapron. “This false notion is now promoted by many governments to justify killing. Our study shows there is no scientific basis for it.”

Why hunting fuels poaching

Treves explains the mechanism as follows:

"Would-be poachers learn from the government, which kills predators to protect livestock, that they can do it better themselves. Or the government sends a signal that wolves are worth less. This is how people become poachers, and they believe the risk of being arrested keeps decreasing."

This dynamic is easy to understand: if the state itself kills, why should the individual respect the animal?

Implications for Europe and Switzerland

The findings are highly relevant to the European debate, including in Switzerland: time and again, there are calls to shoot wolves “to pacify” the population or as “preventive protection” for livestock. Science now shows: the opposite happens.

State-sanctioned culls and the hobby hunting of protected wildlife must urgently be re-evaluated in light of these findings — not on the basis of hunters’ tales, but on the basis of scientific evidence.

Hunting programmes targeting protected wildlife are not a means of pacification. They destroy trust, undermine the concept of conservation, and encourage illegal killing.

Those who claim “killing is species protection” are spreading a dangerous myth. True species protection does not lie in pulling the trigger, but in respect for life and in the consistent protection of wildlife.