You just don’t think of wildlife conservationists and hunters as being on the same team.
That’s a very logical reaction, but it doesn’t stop some organizations from trying to trick us into thinking otherwise.
Foundation for North-American Wild Sheep: don’t let the name fool you. This organization and others like it really want to protect hunters’ playgrounds. The wild sheep and other wildlife populations are just part of the game.
Groups like FNAWS make deals with U.S., Canadian and Mexican states in which they can auction off a few hunting permits to kill otherwise protected animals, allowing really wealthy people to play shooting games in the animals’ backyards.
These hunters are not concerned with the future of the animals but the possibility that one day there just won’t be any more to shoot. So they call themselves conservationists and manipulate the environments to prevent the wildlife’s natural predators from balancing out the size of the population and then dress up in camouflage and invade natural habitats.
Hunting-based conservation groups wave increased wildlife populations statistics and dollars contributed to environmental causes in our faces hoping we are so excited by the numbers that we don’t do the math for the long-term effects of this strange method of conservation.
Immediately I think of how counter-intuitive the whole thing seems. The environment has always taken a backseat to United States’ expansion and development.
I am convinced that while a lot of this has to do with the country’s competitive attitude, the reason it has always been so easy to put humans before nature is our lack of respect for any living thing that doesn’t resemble us.
Hunting-based conservation is another twisted example of our desire for the prize—in this case an actual animal trophy—without concern for anything else. While groups like FNAWS claim this is the best thing for conserving wildlife, hunting is still the driving force. There is no change in how these people view wildlife.
Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary defines conservation as a “careful preservation and protection of something” or the “planned management of a natural resource to prevent exploitation, destruction, or neglect.”
It can be a difficult argument to make because there is immediate satisfaction for some in the environmental community who see the increased numbers of Big Horn sheep, for example, or the millions of dollars made possible by the auctioned off hunting permits.
But welcoming hunting with open arms even in this way continues to promote a devastating mindset. Killing for sport is not acceptable as far as I’m concerned. The hunters are not concerned with preventing wildlife destruction; they are exploiting the animals and the sensitive balance of nature for one more wall ornament.
This kind of conservation will not preserve wildlife in the end because in order to maintain preservation there needs to be a complete shift in how we see nature in relationship to ourselves and as a force of its own
One argument for hunting-based conservation is that the practice helps keep these animal populations down to a safe amount to promote the well-being of the species.
But this is not a strong enough argument because first these groups take control of nature — preventing the species’ natural predators from following their instincts by cutting down the brush they use to creep up on their prey — then as they watch the population numbers increase they come in with their guns and play nature’s hero saying it’s up to them to keep the population under control.
Instead of checking what humans are doing to the habitats that destroy animal populations in the first place, the hunting-based conservation groups are creating more problems.
Bailey Porter, a senior journalism major, is editor in chief of the Campus Times. She can be reached by e-mail at porterb@ulv.edu.
