Utah Launches Massive Effort To Stop Wildlife Poaching

Utah is blessed with abundant wildlife, and wildlife watching is a popular pastime. Winter is a great time to observe animals because they often congregate at lower elevations where they are easier to see. If done responsibly, winter wildlife watching can be enjoyed without negatively impacting the animals.

Unfortunately, some folks aren't satisfied to observe, photograph or even harvest animals legally during prescribed hunting seasons. Poaching and the wanton destruction of wild animals has long been a problem. Just today KSL TV carried this report on deer poached in SE Utah.

Now, Utah's Division of Wildlife Resources is launching a massive effort to curb poaching. The agency provided the news release below.

DWR launches massive patrol effort

Officers need your help

This winter is not a good time to try to kill a mule deer illegally in Utah.

DWR officer Josh Carver shows what wildlife officers are trying to stop this winter: the illegal killing of mule deer in Utah.

Photo by Josh Carver.

Conservation officers with the Division of Wildlife Resources are focusing massive patrol efforts on ranges on which deer congregate in the winter. Officers are conducting the patrols for one reason: to protect Utah's mule deer from poachers.

Tony Wood, chief of the DWR's Law Enforcement Section, says winter is the time of year when deer congregate on ranges at lower elevations. As large groups of deer bunch together, they provide an enticing target for poachers. But the deers' behavior helps wildlife officers too: it allows officers to zero in on the areas where poaching is most likely to occur.

"If there's an area in Utah that attracts mule deer in the winter," Wood says, "we're watching it."

Wood encourages you to get involved.

"This winter," he says, "as you travel to areas where deer congregate, make sure 1-800-662-3337 is programmed into your cell phone. That's our Turn-in-a-Poacher hotline number. If you see anything suspicious, call us. The hotline is staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week."

Patrol efforts

Wood says DWR officers are doing the following this winter:

• Patrolling winter ranges at night. Officers are conducting these patrols on land and from the air.
• Conducting saturation patrols that put several DWR officers on the same piece of winter range at the same time.

Wood says winter range patrols are underway across Utah. The patrols will continue until the deer shed their antlers this spring.

Poachers take a big toll

So far in 2014, wildlife officers have investigated the illegal killing of 152 mule deer in Utah.

Most of the deer were bucks. The antlers on seven of the bucks were big enough to place the deer in a trophy category.

"If you're a hunter," Wood says, "you would have been thrilled to take any of these bucks. Poachers took that chance away from you."

The monetary value of the animals to Utah's citizens is $114,000.