BharatNotes Poaching
noun (gerund); also verb (present participle of "poach", transitive/intransitive)Usage in a UPSC answer
Despite the success of Project Tiger, sustained poaching driven by transnational demand for wildlife parts continues to undermine India's conservation gains, underscoring the need to treat wildlife crime as organised crime rather than a mere forest-department lapse.
Synonyms
Antonyms
Word Family
poach (v), poacher (n), poached (adj), anti-poaching (adj compound)
Root
Old French pochier = to thrust into a bag; Middle French poche = pocket/pouch; Middle English pocchen
Etymology
From Middle English pocchen ("to bag"), via Old French pochier ("to thrust into a bag"), from Middle French poche ("pocket, pouch") — illegal hunters would stuff stolen game into bags to conceal their catch.
Memory Hook
Picture a "POACHer" sneaking onto someone else's land to "PO-ke" and snatch game — the root is the same poke/thrust as in "pocketing" what isn't yours.
How This Word Works in UPSC Writing
The illegal hunting, capture or killing of wildlife. Protection under the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972 now runs through four schedules, after the Wild Life (Protection) Amendment Act, 2022 rationalised the earlier six: Schedule I carries the highest protection, Schedule II a lesser degree, Schedule III covers protected plants, and Schedule IV reproduces the CITES appendices governing regulated trade. The analytical point for GS3 is that poaching is demand-driven and transnational, so protection at the habitat is necessary but never sufficient. The effective lever is disrupting the trade chain, which is why the 2022 amendment wrote CITES obligations into domestic law and why the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau's function is intelligence and coordination rather than patrolling.
Don’t Confuse It With
Poaching is the illegal taking of wildlife, usually for trade. Hunting is defined widely under the Act, reaching capture, injury and even damage to eggs and nests, so the offence is broader than killing. Retaliatory killing arises from human-wildlife conflict rather than from trade, so its remedy is compensation and conflict mitigation rather than policing. Trafficking is the downstream movement and sale of parts. Culling is legally sanctioned population reduction, which is why declaring a species vermin is contentious.
Hindi Meaning
अवैध शिकार (avaidh shikār); शिकार alone means hunting, lawful or not.
Common Questions
- What is poaching?
- The illegal hunting, capturing or killing of wild animals in violation of wildlife protection law.
- How many schedules does the Wild Life (Protection) Act have now?
- Four. The Amendment Act of 2022 rationalised the earlier six schedules into four, the last of which reproduces the CITES appendices.
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