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March/April 1999 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Editor’s Notebook Inside Story Feature: Hunting Poachers Whale-eating bears

Kenny and Dennis had begun the day making phone calls and sending e-mail queries throughout Northern Ontario. The first request was for a recently killed bull moose. By midday, they had a line on an illegally hunted bull confiscated by MNR at Foleyet, 350 kilometres southeast of Terrace Bay. But the animal had been gutted and hung. Guts would be needed to stage a believable sting. Another request went out, this time for fresh viscera. The Geraldton office, about 110 kilometres north, came through with a recently killed cow moose with, as Kenny delicately describes it, "guts cookin’ inside." Dennis headed southeast to pick up the bull while Kenny went north to scoop guts into bags.

Field officer Paul Dennis displays anti-poaching tools: emergency location transmitter, DNA sampling kit, magnesium illuminating flare, paste and powder for invisibly marking evidence, detecting light, binoculars, handcuffs, tranquilizing dart kit and rigle, spotlight and metal detector.

It had taken four years of investigative work to get that moose to that site on that night. It was another two years before the case made it to court. Such painstaking efforts challenge anyone who believes Ontario is not serious about crimes against natural resources. MNR, as they say, will do almost anything to get their man.

Poaching — the taking of a wild animal outside of federal, provincial or territorial hunting rules — is estimated to be a multi-billion-dollar industry worldwide. The most commonly poached species in Canada are deer, moose, bear and fish. But there are also markets for bighorn sheep, elk, reptiles and amphibians, even eider ducks. Estimates of how many animals are taken illegally vary widely. Some say it is impossible to know. One report suggests that "fewer than 10 percent of poaching offences are detected."

Whatever the figures, poaching in Canada is rarely considered a serious threat to the survival of an entire species. "If you look at the broad scale, do we have lots of moose, do we have lots of walleye in Ontario? Yes, we do," says Mike Morencie, head of MNR’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU). Trouble can arise, however, when poaching is coupled with other stresses, such as habitat loss caused by development or natural disasters.

Black bears are perhaps the best-known victims of commercialized poaching in Canada. Bear paws and gallbladders are in great demand in South Korea, China and Japan where the paws are considered a delicacy and the bile is used in medicines and other products. The Asiatic black bear, sun bear, sloth bear, giant panda and two populations of brown bear are listed as endangered or threatened under the Convention on International Trade for Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. The shortage has led to increased bear-poaching pressure throughout Canada and the United States, which has some groups warning of a pending crisis among some of North America’s bear populations.

"There is evidence in some provinces that some individuals involved in the trade have made a business of procuring and distributing bear parts, and have well-developed networks to carry out these activities, both in Canada and abroad," says biologist Joan Gregorich in a 1997 study on poaching in Canada prepared for the Canadian Wildlife Federation. A priority for policy makers, she concludes, should be to ensure the country’s black bear population — estimated as high as 422,000 — remains healthy.

Governments have another reason to be vigilant about enforcing wildlife laws: Canada’s hunting industry is estimated to be worth $300 million each year to the economy. Today, bear, moose and deer hunting activities add $136 million to Ontario’s economy alone.

Government downsizing in recent years forced a re-evaluation of how Ontario protects its natural resources, says John Chevalier, manager of MNR’s enforcement program. What did they find? "We had conservation officers running around the province doing what they thought was important and needed to be done," he says. Licence and weapons violations and prosecution of small-scale poaching operators were the norm.

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