Why You Should Love Hunters

“We cannot simply say we are conservationists… concerned for wildlife’s future. We must demonstrate this… over and over again. Only by doing so can we convince society of our concern for the wild others we pursue and protect…” Shane Patrick Mahoney

On Sunday, Dec. 13, Homey Steve Douglas and I took a run to Spokane to hear Shane Mahoney speak to the Wolf Advisory Group (WAG), of the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission. The advisory group is comprised of a cross-section of citizens and organizations with interests in the wolves of Washington – from anti-hunters to birders to sportsmen/women to ranchers and so on. At earlier meetings, the ranching community had discussed its perspectives and issues with the WAG, and the environmental community had made a presentation. Shane was invited to speak on behalf of the hunting community, as he has done in one or another forum dozens of times across North America,

Shane is considered one of the world’s foremost authorities on the North American model of conservation. Our model of wildlife conservation is unique in most of the world; its principles are near and dear to the hearts of those of us reared in our hunting traditions, yet we rarely are successful in efforts to share them with the non-hunting public. Thus, Steve and I drove three hours east.

Mahoney is president and CEO of Conservation Visions, with a graduate degree in zoology and more than three decades of work in Canada and North America as a scientist, wildlife manager, policy innovator and strategic advisor. Add to that, filmmaker, writer, narrator, TV and radio personality, and lecturer to the scientific and professional wildlife communities, as well as the hunting and non-hunting public. His work has been published in more than 50 scholarly papers, 18 peer-reviewed journals and eight book chapters, and he has written more than 100 articles for such magazines as Outdoor Life, Sports Afield, North American Hunter and Sweden’s Big Game. He is steadfast in his support of sustainable use, and deeply committed to helping the general public understand the history and facts of North American wildlife conservation.

Within Shane’s message is a simple, yet profound, concept: wildlife made us human; we all must recognize our responsibility to our wild others; and all our human perspectives must find common ground to ensure the future of wildlife as the planet changes around us.

As he made his points, he often looked to the Wolf Advisory Group as an example of pulling all wildlife interests into one conversation to find common ground, to truly understand and respect each other’s contributions, and to find ways forward together. We must all focus on our caring for wild things and places – and move beyond the divisiveness which has arisen from each group of us focusing on how we care. The fate of every species rests in our hands; finding a common path and the funding to follow it, he observed, is our only hope for the future of our wildlife.

Today, in North America – and almost nowhere else – we have more wildlife than ever – certainly dating back to the Ice Age. Thank the hunting community for that.

A hundred years ago, an endangered species list would likely have included wild turkeys, Canada geese, most waterfowl species, elk, and white-tailed deer – all of which are over-abundant in one or another part of North America today. The Boone and Crockett Club is today synonymous with trophy hunting, but Theodore Roosevelt and hunting friends started it in 1887 because of a fear that game animals would soon be extinct, and they wanted a “museum” to help Americans remember what they had lost.

Roosevelt and many other dedicated hunters started a movement which led to the creation of the 1937 Pittman-Robertson excise tax on firearms and other sporting goods. That tax supported the development of professional game management agencies in America. To date, those P-R funds have produced well over seven billion dollars for wildlife management. 70% of state wildlife agency budgets today come from those taxes and license fees paid by hunters, even though only six percent of Americans actually hunt.

The bottom line is that we have abundant wildlife today because hunters have been willing to foot the bill. That will be ever more difficult ahead.

Hunters don’t pay for everything (state and national parks and forests, for example), of course, and the cost of sustaining our wildlife populations will rapidly rise with human population and changing planetary conditions.

Today we seem ever more splintered – one hunting group vs another, anti-hunters vs all hunting, consumers of meat vs vegetarians, public land users vs preservationists – and it is not sustainable. Somehow, if we want wildlife for our children’s children, we must find common ground.

Shane Mahoney founded a starting point for this journey, and summarizes it this way: “We have only one natural world and only one humanity. Conservation Visions, Inc. exists because we have only one chance to preserve both.” Explore these thoughts and ideas for yourself at www.conservationvisions.com.

Thank a hunter for her or his contributions to today’s abundant wildlife populations – and think about where we go now.