Poachers and Loggers Help Nature

Posted by Dawn M. Smith Aug 5, 2008

Its happening in lots of places and the humans are benefiting as much as the animals. People who once survived by poaching endangered species or illegally cutting trees are being paid to stop others from doing the same.

In Sri Lanka, the Turtle Conservation Project (TCP) hires former egg poachers to guard sea turtle nests and trains them in educating the public. With a regular salary and housing for the workers and their families, there is strong incentive to become ‘the good guys’.

In Bangladesh, illegal tree felling was threatening endangered Hoolock gibbons by fragmenting their forest habitat. Now some of the former illegal loggers are part of a patrol to protect that forest. The patrol teams are paid and the project is also helping the villagers develop other means of supporting themselves.

Not only do these types of projects stop some of the poachers and illegal loggers by giving them alternatives, it takes advantage of their insider knowledge to improve protection of the area.

The sea turtle egg poachers know where the turtles nest and what nests look like so they are easily able to find the nests. In areas where the nests can’t easily be protected, they can move the eggs to a safer area, making the nests less visible and leaving the empty nests for poachers to waste their time digging up.

While some ‘wise use’ type projects encourage limited exploitation of the wildlife or habitats that need to be protected, this type of project helps local people truly understand the value of protecting areas while finding alternative means of survival.