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Sustainable
eNews |
January 2004 |
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IWMC
World Conservation Trust |
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Hunting and Trapping
by James B. Beers Biologist
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Hunting and trapping are simply pursuits that provide food, recreation, fur,
government revenue, business profits, and a rich tradition. They exist because
we want to pursue them for various reasons and by so doing animals are kept in
numbers and distributed to maximize their benefits to man and to minimize their
harm. Several species of whales should be hunted to allow increases in highly
desirable commercial fisheries. Elephants, crocodiles, and several big cats
should be hunted in Africa to allow Africans the same opportunities for a safer
and better life that Americans and Europeans have enjoyed since they minimized
the presence of harmful animals in their backyards. Deer and elk and turkeys
should be hunted because their populations can be so maintained; it creates
personal enjoyment for millions and strong business profits; and it generates
constant financing of environmental and wildlife management by government that
is thereby transferred from taxpayers to users.
A note to environmental and animal rights activists and government press
release writers; repeating an untruth doesn't make it so. Hunting and trapping
are tools like guns and automobiles. They can be used for many things and in
America we use guns and automobiles for many good ends and we punish those who
use them for bad ends. Hunting and trapping in the past reflected the determined
wishes of many citizens to create a safe, productive environment. Today and
tomorrow hunting and trapping are more important than ever to preserve species
by providing revenue and value to the preservation of animals while providing
peace and opportunity for rural folks around the world. We know more than ever
how to regulate and direct these tools of environmental management and societal
benefit. It is ironic that such misinformation is believed while we know so much
better than ever before how hunting and trapping can benefit us all.
So the next time you read about hunting and trapping doing something bad,
remember that killing elephants for their ivory or their meat or their hide or
to prevent them from trampling children or crops or denuding forest isn't
hunting it is a rational answer to large elephant populations, poor people,
strong markets, and national desired to progress like others. Likewise killing
certain whales that keep depressed fisheries down (just like wolves push
struggling ranchers over the edge by decreasing narrow profit margins) reflects
many things from a desire for more commercial fish to a more balanced diversity
in the oceans. Hunting is merely the preferred tool of choice. Taxpayers paying
for limited animal control is neither as efficient nor as comprehensive as
managing hunters who pay you and proceed to hunt where and as directed. The fact
that so many still swallow this line about hunting and trapping is reminiscent
of what H.L. Mencken once observed, "That milking a cow is an operation
demanding a special talent that is possessed by yokels, and that a person born
in a large city can never hope to acquire it." From one yokel to another,
certain cows need to be milked and certain animals need to be hunted. 
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