Poachers have killed off half of Ukraine’s game animals
Poaching has always been a big problem in Ukraine, but the last few years have seen a veritable boom. Experts believe that one of the causes is our legislation, which almost allows officials to turn a blind eye to offenders. According to Mykola Kostrov, chief of Ukraine’s State Ecological Inspection, the Ukrainian government must first improve the existing law and restore the powers of community inspectors if we are to combat poaching on a serious scale.
“As a result of mass poaching, between 1991 and 2008 the population of many types of game animals-deer, roes, elks, wild ducks, and geese – has diminished by 30 to 70 percent, while the number of bears and European bison has shrunk by two and three times, respectively. No less disastrous is the situation in the fisheries: poachers annually catch almost 197,000 tons of fish in freshwater bodies as well as the Black and Azov seas,” Kostrov said.
According to this environmental official, every year Ukraine’s nature conservation authorities apprehend over 111,000 lawbreakers, of which 11,000 have violated hunting rules and 100,000 have engaged in illegal fishing. To make matters worse, poachers are almost never brought to justice. Environmentalists and conservation officers say that only 1 to 2 percent of all poaching crimes are being reported.
According to Volodymyr Boreiko, director of the Kyiv Ecological and Cultural Center, the state’s efforts to fight poaching are very ineffective. He recalls that combating poaching used to be a matter of public concern.
Community-based hunting, fishing, and environmental inspectors once made a considerable contribution to the fight against this shameful crime, drawing up about 30 percent of all reports on this type of offense. But they were unjustifiably stripped of this right in 2001, Boreiko says.
The draft law “On Introducing Changes to the Code of Administrative Offenses in Order to Activate the Struggle against Poaching” was submitted to Ukraine’s parliament in the winter of 2007 and in July 2008. According to its drafters, this law will boost the struggle against the illegal manufacture and sale of poaching devices in Ukraine, and increase the powers of governmental nature conservation bodies and community environmentalists to draw up reports on environmental violations.
Unfortunately, these changes to the Administrative Code were blocked by the Parliamentary Committee on Nature Conservation Legislation. Nevertheless, nature conservationists and ecologists say they are determined to press their case.
