Defining Legal Killing and Poaching

We define legal killing to include regulated harvest or government removal of a protected animal, as long as the death was reported after a permitted activity. We define poaching as any non-permitted killing in which the actor intended to kill an animal (trapping, poison, shooting, etc.), as opposed to most vehicle collisions in which the driver likely does not intend to kill any animal. This definition of poaching is justified under the Endangered Species Act because the U.S. Congress of 1973 explicitly made it illegal to kill a listed species regardless of “knowingly” doing so (Newcomer et al. 2011 ). Also, we redefine “known fates” and “unknown fates” from their common usage for marked animals. We define known fate as any marked animal whose cause of death is confirmed (i.e., excluding marked animals whose remains are recovered but are assigned to “unknown cause” of death, and excluding marked animals that disappear). Importantly, we differ from several other authorities by highlighting that “unknown cause” of death never includes legal killing (because, by definition, a legal kill must be reported so its cause is known). Finally, many studies of marked animals have to contend with the possibility that a marked animal that disappeared is still alive but has eluded monitoring. We avoid this difficulty for all 4 populations under analysis by restricting ourselves to older time periods, so radiocollared wolves could not still be alive today.