In this third and final essay in his series on the importance of public dialogue, Shane Mahoney suggests that a powerful wind of change is sweeping across the conservation landscape. He argues that for the 21st century, building a formidable inclusive coalition is the only way to conserve wildlife and to maintain hunting as a vital force in our society. Building such a coalition will require bold new leadership that engages with the general public and reaches across the conservation aisle.
Private land issues and the privatization of wildlife have become major debates with conservation circles. In a series of articles, Shane Mahoney examines this controversy and comments on what has become a divisive issue not only between hunters and non-hunters, but among hunters themselves.
The hunting community needs to demonstrate its commitment to conservation and to do so by directly speaking to and engaging the general public. Our safe ledges, from which hunters look down on the uncertainty of public discourse, can keep us for only a little longer. Social, economic, and ecological realities leave hunters absolutely no choice. Hunters must either convince society of hunting’s modern relevance and value, or perish.
The sad and often perverse slaughter of wildlife that marked the European colonization of North America, remains one of the great examples of how selfish purpose has the capacity to improverish both nature and society. Fortunatly, the great innovation we term conservation was itself an outcome of this unfettered onslaught and exemplifies, how the spur of crisis can raise both a nation's conscience and its resolve to progress. Indeed, the fading thunder of the once innumberable bison still echos in our consciousness.
"When the buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground and they could not lift them up again. After this nothing happened..."- Chief of the Crow Nation, Plenty Coups, 1928.
The listing in May 2008 of the polar bear as "threatened" by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) has been a highly controversial decision. In the first of a seies of articles, Shane Mahoney discusses the special place this inspiring animal has held in human cultures and the complicated scenario that an interface between climate change debate, wildlife science, and the ESA presents for hunters and the sutainable use of wildlife.
Wildlife does not exist by accident. It thrives today in North America because of a wondrous network of policies, laws and financial support structures largely put in place and maintained by the small percentage of us who hunt and fish. Perhaps in some distant future society at large will pay for what we have carried for a century or more; but even if this were true would not the history of our achievement be worth telling? The reality is that no feasible alternative model for wildlife conservation is yet within our reach, and may never be.
Over long and now misted millennia the rhythm of our human existence was the same. Pursuing our sacred and relentless desire to survive, we hunted and gathered the living things that miraculously suited our physical needs for food and warmth. Across endless wild environments we perfected the one great arc of our existence, the first great act of globalization. We marched slowly out of Africa and encircled our world, driven by need and curiosity and fuelled by the death of wild others. Perfecting weapons within, we fashioned stone, honed bone and wood, and hunted our way to modernity.
The most recent surveys of public attitudes towards regulated hunting in the United States indicate that over 75% of those responding support this activity. Yet we know very well that not all is well, that participation in hunting is declining, that state agency conservation programs are running out of money, that privatization of wildlife and a host of other controversies are highly divisive in our own ranks, and getting more so, and that our hunting community is aging rapidly.
As a society we are in desperate need of a more fundamental debate and dialogue on the issues of why we hunt and its relevance in modern times. It may be fashionable or convenient to reduce arguments in favour of hunting to simplistic categories or half-truths, but in the end these arguments will fail us where it matters most; in the fight for the hearts of the public majority who still support us, for the support of those who may be opposed but are truly open minded, and for our own life long commitments to our greatest engagement with nature.
