ABSTRACT
This chapter examines both subsistence and commercial illegal hunting and their impact on the wildlife resource. A wildlife authority with a budget to spend on law enforcement has the option to increase the probability that a gang will be caught. In order to understand how changing rates of detection and penalties affect the poacher, the economic context of the poacher’s decision must be taken into account. All the economic variables are in Zambian Kwacha and are for the situation in 1985. The detection rate is probably the major determinant of poaching activity, but the type of penalty given once the poacher has been caught can also have a major effect on the incentives to poach. Local hunters could easily be deterred by fairly small penalties. They are particularly suited to local involvement schemes and the return of some dividend from the resource that was once theirs.
