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The War on Poaching Is Just Like the War on Drugs

A recent raid in Mozambique was the result of months of intelligence.
The contraband confiscated earlier this week. Image: WCS

Mozambique, a country where more than 900 elephants have been poached in the last three years, shut down a high-profile poaching ring earlier this week, one of the first successes in a new enforcement strategy that values intelligence and serious, long-term police investigations alongside standard patrols of the protected areas where elephants live.

If that tactic sounds familiar, it's because you probably know it from the war on drugs. While that whole campaign has had mixed results, it's generally acknowledged that it's better to cut off organized crime at the head, rather than worry about the lower levels of the organization.

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Experts on the ground say the country shut down one of five well-organized groups hunting elephants in the country's Niassa National Reserve, which is great news. But, while the bust was successful, the fact that at least four major groups remain is a stark reminder that poaching has become much like the drug trade. When one operation is shut down, another one pops up: There's simply too much money to be made.

I'm  by no means the first to point this out, and with poaching rings being increasingly tied to terrorism and other major international crimes, the comparison is more apt than ever. But Mozambique's raid shows that police on the ground are starting to use tactics that police in the United States have used (with varying levels of success) to quell the drug trade.

Cristian Samper with a poached elephant in Niassa. Image: Alastair Nelson/WCS

Six people were arrested, and four of them are believed to be  involved not just in poaching but in higher level organized crime activities. That includes trafficking ivory across borders, Cristian Samper, CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society, who was on the ground during the Mozambique raid, told me.

Targeting bigger players in the illegal wildlife market is a step beyond the standard policing of preservation areas and national reserves. The thinking goes—much like it does in the drug game—that if you can find an informant or two and arrest higher level people, you'll do much more to actually stop the illegal activity than if you make street-level busts or arrest a poacher or two out in the field.

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In this case, officials say that the investigation was going on for more than 10 months and the raid relied on members of the local community to inform on the people allegedly involved in the ring. According to Samper, 12 tusks and two rifles were confiscated.

But just like the drug trade, poaching isn't going to stop just because of a few busts on the supply side. While making busts is an important facet of a trafficking mitigation strategy, especially in the case of rare wildlife, but to have any sort of shot at stopping the trade, you need to kill demand.

"We have to stop the killing, stop the trafficking, and stop the demand," Samper said. "Poaching is going to continue until we  cut off the demand for ivory in places like Asia, in places like New York."

Elephants in Niassa. Image: Cristian Samper

The obvious difference between the drug trade and the ivory one, of course, is that elephants aren't a cash crop; the arguments for legalization that apply to the drug trade don't apply equally to the wildlife trade, where increased market action will push threatened species closer to extinction.

Countries have an obligation to protect endangered species and the ecosystems that they live in. While there are plenty of people who want to say c'est la vie to the people growing and selling cocaine and weed, you can't allow the wholesale slaughter of a species.

On that note, then, the raid in Mozambique has to be considered a win (especially considering that as recently as last year,  park rangers in Mozambique were caught working with poachers to kill rhinos, which are now extinct in the country).

"What's important for me is we stop the killing in areas like Niassa using good relationships we form with people on the ground, using the intelligence we've gathered," Samper said. "It's not enough to just be out in the field."

He's absolutely right. Ending poaching may feel like an impossible task, but if it's going to be controlled on the supply side, it's probably got to come with real police work and arrests that happen higher up the ladder. The work never stops, either: Samper told me that more raids are planned for later this week.