In Primorsky Krai, on January 15, the hunting season for hoofed animals ended. By this time, the inspectors of the operational groups of the KGBU Directorate for the Protection of Objects of the Animal World and Protected Protected Areas supported by the Amur Tiger Center, summed up their work in December 2015 and early January 2016.
In December 2015 and parts of January, the state hunting inspectors of the task forces revealed 273 administrative offenses in the field of hunting. This is almost three times more than in the fall. These are the data of the institution subordinated to the Department of Hunting Supervision of the Primorsky Krai. During the same period, 30 units of hunting weapons were seized, half of them with a rifled barrel.
The increase in performance in the first half of winter is due to several reasons. First, from December to January 15 - the hunting season for hoofed animals is in full swing, and the New Year's holiday weekend is most welcome, and hunting enthusiasts, both legal and illegal, rushed into the taiga (during this time 70 offenses were recorded in the forest ); secondly, in the forest there was a steady snow cover, which allows inspectors to track the movement of violators or their vehicles.
“Winter, on the one hand, is an opportune time to catch poachers, since it is possible to “read” all the tracks in the snow and it is easier to fix them. On the other hand, during this period of time in the taiga there are many law-abiding hunters, loggers and just having a rest, checking of which takes a lot of time and effort from the inspector of hunting supervision, because the traces of “not written” to whom they belong,” says Sergey Aramilev, director of the Primorsky branch of the Amur Tiger Center. -“New Year's holidays also added complexity, as part of the hunters and poachers were intoxicated. Nevertheless, it can be stated that the hunting season for ungulates was under the control of the hunting supervision service, and in most cases they managed to catch the offenders and not spoil the holiday to law-abiding hunters.”
It happened in one of the hunting farms in the Ussuri region. Checking the fresh traces of the car, inspectors found the hunters, who had hunting documents and weapons, and, it would seem, the fears were in vain. However, just in case, the inspectors decided to “unravel” all the tracks, and they found a backpack next to the tracks of the vehicle.
The hunters explained that it does not belong to them and that they are in it - they do not know. In the backpack, inspectors found fragments of wild boar carcass with a total weight of about 70 kilograms, at first glance, belonging to different individuals.
A protocol was drawn up for the seizure of illegally mined hunting products and a chart of the incident was drawn up with markings of the location of traces of people, a car and a backpack with meat. The collected materials were transferred to initiate an administrative violation case. If it is established that the find really belongs to one of the hunters, and the examination confirms the assumption of the inspectors that there is indeed boar meat in the backpack and determines how many individuals it belongs to, then the violator faces fines or deprivation of the right to hunt, with damages to the state in the amount at least 120,000 rubles.
Poachers continue to use the forbidden type of hunting: they blind animals with powerful lighting devices at night using vehicles, and when an ungulate freezes, they shoot at it.
It was possible to detain such "luminaries" by one of the task forces in the Pogranichny region. According to inspector Alexei Melkin, during a raid event, almost at midnight a car was seen on the forest road, the passengers of which were shining with bright headlights and firing towards the curb. The inspectors began to pursue the car.
“An hour later, the car turned to the river. Two men jumped out of the car, one of whom was carrying a gun. They started to flee, we followed them for about ten minutes. After the arrest, it turned out that they had a legal weapon, but there was no permission to mine. We arrived specially to hunt from Nadezhdinsky district, but did not manage to kill anyone. By the way, violators moved in a passenger car, a subcompact, in order to be inconspicuous,” said Alexey Melkin, inspector of the KGBU Directorate for the Protection of Objects of Fauna and Protected Areas of the Primorsky Krai.
Recall that this type of hunt is part of a crime under article 258 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Violators face a large fine and deprivation of a weapon or car that could be confiscated the state.