Residents of Dokshytsy district barbarically hunted elk in the nature reserve

Residents of the Dokshitsky district hunted two elk using wire snares in a nature reserve. Poachers were apprehended red-handed, and a criminal case was initiated for illegal hunting. Inspectors estimated the damage caused to nature at 486 million rubles (2,700 base units).

A resident of the village of Fedorki, Dokshitsky district, was selling elk meat to his neighbors. At the end of last month, employees of the Begoml Inter-district Inspectorate for the Protection of Fauna and Flora learned about this from one of the buyers and decided to pay the seller a visit.

As reported by Olga Gromovich, press secretary of the State Inspectorate for the Protection of Fauna and Flora under the President of the Republic of Belarus, inspectors found about 100 kilograms of game meat at the suspect's property. In the forest near the house, they found three dozen metal snares – with their help, the poacher and his accomplice, a fellow villager, caught large game.

– The most outrageous thing is not even that the offenders used barbaric methods for hunting. They hunted in the Rozhnyanskoye forestry, which belongs to the Berezinsky Biosphere Reserve, where hunting is prohibited, – added Olga Gromovich. – Here they took at least one male, as well as a female elk with an embryo. At the site where the animal carcasses were butchered, our employees found about 60 kilograms of meat, already packed in bags.

The Dokshitsky District Department of the Investigative Committee initiated a criminal case under Part 4 of Article 282 of the Criminal Code of Belarus. For their unlawful actions, the poachers will not only have to compensate for the damage caused to nature in the amount of 486 million rubles but also pay a significant fine at a minimum.

Sergey Muravsky, SB Belarus Today