Riding the Fur cycles and
Watching Fashion trends

People love to entertain each other, emulate one another's styles, and express their creativity through ever changing variations on dress, language patterns, music and dance. Those humans defined by their culture as attractive individuals may thus have a huge influence on the styles adopted by their admirers. Over the past twenty years, a number of celebrities in the entertainment industry were defining themselves as "good people" through their clothing preferences. They declared that fur and leather were not appropriate choices for "good people", and they encouraged their fans to pass up wearing fur and choosing leather for clothing or accessories. Plastic was "in." Faux furs were all the rage, as was the range of gaudy, unnatural colors that signified they were not animal products.

For whatever reasons, the anti-fur, fake fur and pro-plastic fashion choices have now suffered diminished general acceptance. Some analysts are attributing this to the new stardom of hip hop entertainers such as Sean "Puffy" Combs, and some new female stars, whose bodies are now adorned with variants of genuine fox, chinchilla, and mink. Women's magazines such as Vogue are veritable catalogues of fur choices. Models decked out in untraditional fur garments fill every page. Fur fashion is equated with sex appeal and the lure of the exotic, expensive, and exclusive choices made by the beautiful people. One has to wonder where it all comes from, and why such cycles rise and fall about every thirty years, and if there is anything meaningful about it all .

Back in the real world, down to earth, it matters a great deal. Local people who live in rural areas have a relationship with furbearers that is cultural, social, and economic. Untrapped, unhunted wildlife react to a lack of predation on them during the "buy plastic" fashion trend times. They increase in numbers, and suffer more often from diseases such as rabies, distemper, mange, and parvovirus. They affect people when they prey on livestock and pets, cause vehicle accidents, property damage to buildings, flood land, and cause roads to flood or wash out. Beavers cause hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of road damage in rural and suburban areas. Muskrats tunnel through pond dams and stream banks, creating unexpected sink holes and wet spots that are expensive to correct. Municipal water supplies are contaminated by increased furbearer presence, and people find themselves sickened by giardiasis and other intestinal ailments. "Boil water" orders come too late to prevent thousands from contracting these illnesses.

Our natural environment changes all the time, and factors as urban and urbane as the fur industry, entertainment stars, and slick magazines, affect the most backwoods and isolated of areas, simply because human predation on furbearers is important in keeping them from being menaces and nuisances. Fur fashion trends thus directly affect human health, car insurance rates, local taxes, building maintenance costs, agricultural expenses and profits, and even tourism.

In North America, fortunately, fur bearers are often regarded as resources, even as they are recognized as potentially dangerous parts of the natural world. The more common, state regulated, enthusiastic trapping of fur bearers is carried out, the better. Trappers do it for the money they receive. Rural residents and even those in small communities and cities reap the benefits when populations of raccoons, beaver, muskrat, coyotes, mink, bobcat, fox, opossum, skunk, fisher, marten, and otter are regularly trapped "just for their fur".

The fur industry keeps them from being exterminated wholesale because of the damage they would otherwise cause to humans with whom they share this environment. For all these reasons, IWMC hopes that the "beautiful people" of the world keep on demanding the right to deck themselves out in fur clothes and accessories, and that all their admirers follow their lead. We'll all be warmer and wiser when the fur cycle is a permanent part of our cultural heritage.

For whatever reasons, the anti-fur, fake fur and pro-plastic fashion choices have now suffered diminished general acceptance.

Our natural environment changes all the time, and factors as urban and urbane as the fur industry, entertainment stars, and slick magazines, affect the most backwoods and isolated of areas, simply because human predation on furbearers is important in keeping them from being menaces and nuisances.

We'll all be warmer and wiser when the fur cycle is a permanent part of our cultural heritage.