What do you know of poaching?

Something that happened in Victorian England on an estate in Scotland and involved the blighter being fined and told to never step foot on your land again.  Or something like that and according to John Buchan’s novel John Macnab it required all sorts of cunning and skill. 

I am now familiar with poachers and poaching but in a different context a reserve in Northern Mozambique far from Scotland or a pond on Clapham Common plundered by night for carp. 

I know what a rice sack that is full of dried carcasses looks like and how the smell of rotten meat lingers on the wind and catches the back of your throat - the familiar smell of rotten guineafowl, rock hyrax, baboon, suni, bush buck and then occasionally the mighty sable or kudu, who horns poke through the rice sacks.

I also know what poachers look like, they look like everyone else but are wearing worn clothes with tired weather beaten faces full of anxiety and hungry anticipation. 

And I am very familiar with the tools of their trade – snares made from all manner of wire repurposed from all sorts of sources (electric cables, fences , the small area of new elephant fencing etc.), bow and arrows, large nets with string made from rice sacks and beautifully wrought spears used with scrawny bush dogs - though this method is employed by Makondas not the local muslim tribe Machua.

But here the realities of poaching are infinitely basic yet complex beyond belief.  Simple thirst for lean protein and a complex mesh of cultural norms and global concerns.  Within an of National Park -‘protected’ with scant resources and against a tide of pressures – where the appeal of bush meat, ivory and timber far out ways any conservation ideals.

The poachers are kept at bay by our small band of local Rangers.  Without Dominik the passionate Reserve Manager these rangers fall into lethargy, but can you blame them?  The poachers are their friends, cousins and neighbours...

So how do you prevent poaching while goats and chicken cost so much more and will never taste of the bush and your homelands?