The Eternal Problem of Poaching
You Can Diminish It, But You Can’t Stop It Completely
By Jack Ewing
In February of 2003 I had the opportunity to visit the Sirena Biological Station located on the Pacific side of Corcovado National Park on the Osa Peninsula. We met several University of Costa Rica biology students who were participating in. Dr. Eduardo Carillo’s long standing study of jaguars (Panthera onca) at Corcovado. They were searching for signs of the jaguar’s primary prey, the white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari,) more commonly known as the wild pig. For an entire week they saw only the smaller collared-peccary (Pecari tajacu.) When asked why the jaguars and their prey were suffering serious population reductions, the UCR students stated that poaching in Corcovado was out of control.
