Boone and Crockett Club Research Identifies Dark Figure and Conservation Cost of Poaching

At a press conference held in Washington, DC, the Boone and Crockett Club announced the findings of the most comprehensive research project on poaching in this country. Using a Bayesian statistical framework, the Poach and Pay research determined that only about 4% of poaching incidents…

are detected. Setting a conservative estimate of what criminologists refer to as the “Dark Figure” of crimes that are undetected or unreported at 95%, the research found that the minimum conservation cost of poaching through lost fines and replacement costs for animals is $1.4 billion annually.