"The real truth of the matter is that the ones who have got expertise can double, triple, quadruple their salaries by switching to the private sector and joining the poachers," he says.
Before bed, Por took us on a night safari where we floated silently past shy gaur – tragically, the heads of these endangered bison can earn poachers £2,000 apiece.
Local people, turned from poachers to gamekeepers, protect and guard "their" forest and are allowed to use it in a sustainable manner, thereby reducing deforestation.
Rainforests in Indonesia's Sumatra are also on the danger list, thanks to poachers, road building and illegal logging.
Before that, poachers were simply fined for illegal possession of a weapon.
The figures can be explained by the arrival of poachers from Tanzania, where the elephant population has already been decimated, according to Alastair Nelson, director of WCS in Mozambique, whose organisation administers the Niassa Reserve.
The team endured a punishing trek, up and down whitewater rivers and through mountainous terrain ribboned with the snare lines of armed poachers.
When gamekeepers turn poachers they know very well which game to go for.The second problem lies in the reading of accounts.
As a first stop, he blocked the sale of nearly 13 tonnes of ivory tusks that had been captured from poachers and persuaded President Daniel arap Moi to put a torch to the pile instead.
They were hunting for ebony and rosewood which the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) alleges was imported from India in violation of the Lacey Act, a 1900 law originally designed to protect fauna from poachers.
And although encounters between elephants and poachers do not always result in the death of the former, it is unlikely that any individual's experience of such encounters would be extensive enough to equip it with an accurate mental map of where game-reserve boundaries are drawn.That suggests that the animals may be learning from the experiences of others, as well as drawing on their own.
