Illegal animal poaching is becoming a very serious issue. Over the years animals have been trapped, killed, and sold for a profit. Poaching not only depletes the number of animals in that species, but also, at large rates, it can cause some animals to become extinct. It may be questioned why this inhumane problem is not being stopped. There are many reasons, one of which is that animal poaching is a very sneaky business. For that reason, it makes apprehension of the criminals even harder. The poaching of endangered animals can have many effects other than the obvious reductions of the species. Illegal animal poaching can cause food chains to become imbalanced and can result in hurting the way of life for some people who depend on nature to live.…show more content… Even the smallest action can set off a chain of events that could potentially and dramatically disturb an ecosystem. Animal poaching plays a factor in offsetting this balance between the different species. A big cat, for example, is a predator in a food chain, which means they help keep the prey population under control. The big cat is then “subsequently keeping the entire ecosystem balanced because predatorily-controlled populations of prey animals help to maintain healthy levels of flora”(Pedersen). When the predators are illegally poached, they cause an imbalance that can ruin the entire process of the ecosystem. The prey then begins to take over, because there is no longer an animal to keep the preys population down (Pedersen). If there is no predator then this results in overpopulation of the prey animals, who are mainly herbivores, that will deplete the plant life in that area. Just by hunting one of the predators in an ecosystem can cause the food chain as a whole to fall