poaching

[ poh-ching ]

noun

1. the illegal practice of trespassing on another's property to hunt or steal game without the landowner's permission.
2. any encroachment on another's property, rights, ideas, or the like.

Other Words From

• anti·poaching adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of poaching¹

First recorded in 1605–15; poach ² + -ing ¹

Example Sentences

The group should also back initiatives that tackle such threats as poaching and habitat loss.

From Washington Post

The park is large enough to support three to four times the number of animals currently present, but poaching, habitat fragmentation, and the loss of connectivity to other nearby ecosystems have long acted to suppress wildlife populations.

From Quartz

With fewer tourists in Africa, poaching is on the rise, and rangers don’t have the resources to keep working.

From Outside Online

Every day they are threatened by habitat destruction and poaching.

From TechCrunch

Where these communities are intact, poaching has dramatically decreased.

From Nautilus

Now poaching is on the rise and wildlife conservation in peril.

From The Daily Beast

The 13,000-person strong anti-poaching Botswana Defense Force protects the animals in a country.

From The Daily Beast

These numbers coincide with balooning business for wildlife poaching, which is now a$300 billion industry.

From The Daily Beast

Africans are the park rangers protecting the elephants and other wildlife from violent criminal poaching networks.

From The Daily Beast

Poaching fell off dramatically, and the black market price of ivory dropped.

From The Daily Beast

For the benefit of innocents who do not know what poaching is like, I will give an idea of this one dog's depredations.

From Project Gutenberg

I took thee for an angler, and thou art but a poaching knave!

From Project Gutenberg

Both fox families kept, for the most part, strictly to their own range, for poaching in a fox country always means trouble.

From Project Gutenberg

Verna, for her part, was keenly enjoying this clandestine night-poaching expedition.

From Project Gutenberg

Poaching, John Carter—is—is a sin of which too many are guilty, owing to the lenity of our most excellent laws.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• piracy
• smuggling
• trafficking