The Poaching
Economics

The standard narrative frames poaching as a crime problem requiring a law enforcement solution. More rangers. More guns. More technology. More arrests. The evidence says this framing is wrong — not morally wrong, but empirically wrong. Kruger proves it. $74 million in enforcement spending did not prevent the rhino population from halving.

The alternative framing is economic. Poaching is a labour market. The supply side is young men in communities with no employment, no alternatives, and proximity to high-value wildlife. The demand side is consumer markets in Vietnam and China where rhino horn is a status commodity. The intermediaries are organised crime networks that capture 90-95% of the value. The poacher is paid just enough to risk his life.

From the Mozambican borderlands adjacent to Kruger, researchers have documented exactly what drives recruitment into poaching networks. It is not poverty in the abstract. It is economic inequality — the visible, daily gap between the wealth generated by wildlife tourism (lodges, flights, guides, rangers) and the poverty of communities who live beside the park but receive none of that revenue. A ranger earns $200 a month. The lodge visible from his village charges $500 per night. The syndicate offers $5,000 for a night's work.

The programmes that actually reduce poaching do not add more enforcement. They close the economic gap. In Rwanda, 10% of gorilla permit revenue flows directly to communities. In Namibia, conservancy members receive dividends from tourism and hunting. Lion Guardians pay warriors $100 a month to protect the animals they used to kill. In Hluhluwe-iMfolozi, where poaching dropped 68% in 2025, the strategy combined dehorning (reducing the prize) with community investment (reducing the incentive).

The deepest failure in anti-poaching strategy is that it arrests the wrong people. Ground-level poachers are the most expendable participants in the chain. For every one arrested, another is recruited within days. The mid-level fixers, the cross-border smugglers, the corrupt officials who issue fraudulent permits — these are rarely caught. John Hume, allegedly operating a trafficking syndicate for seven years while simultaneously selling his farm to conservationists, illustrates the point. The system was too focused on the young men with rifles in the bush to notice the property developer with permits in the office.

The cost of one rhino horn on the black market ($60,000/kg) would fund 25 years of a ranger's salary. The cost of employing a Lion Guardian for a year ($1,200) would pay for itself 800 times over in protected tourism revenue. The economics are not complicated. The plumbing is.