The “Conservationists” are about to go hunting – again

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The following blog post is from the Friends of Edie Road (a group of  bird watchers and wildlife watchers who are proposing repurposing the Edie Road area to non-hunting for three primary reasons:

1. Having hunters and other visitors present in quantity at the same time, in the same area, is an accident waiting to happen.

2. The growing base of non-hunting visitors is seriously under-represented in the WDFW land use decision making process. There are many more birders and photographers visiting the site than hunters.

3. This site is unique for birding because it is flat, easily accessible, and most important: a large variety of bird species love it.

http://friendsofeideroad.org/blog/blog_index.php?pid=10&p=&search=#blt

August 21st, 2013

I never meant this website to become a sounding board for a debate on the appropriateness of hunting as exemplary human behavior. However, I have received so many emails alleging that hunters are conservationists, I feel compelled to offer a few comments that hopefully some of the email writers may consider.
Conservation, according to my dictionary, is the act of conserving; prevention of injury, decay, waste, or loss; preservation, as conservation of wildlife.
The word conservation has been hijacked by people who take pleasure in doing the exact opposite of the definition. They inflict injury, kill and maim without any emotional regret of compassion, and lay waste to entire flocks of wild creatures every season. Hunting is bloody, emotionless killing for pleasure, and changing the description to “recreational opportunity” does not change the act. Nor does the use of “harvesting” make migrating waterfowl into a crop. Nor does describing a hunter as conservationist make that true. The pheasant season is once again upon us. The state sponsored killing of tame, farm-raised pheasant will frighten most of the shorebirds away from Eide Road until the end of November. This is not the way to demonstrate conservation.
But if you hunters look out along the paved road and parking area, you will see that there is an new and growing group of real conservationists emerging. They have invaded your hunt club by posting their yellow Discover Pass inside their windshield. They don’t carry guns but field guides, spotting scopes, and cameras. They exhibit a combination of awe and respect for the wild creatures they encounter, and shock and dismay at seeing them needlessly killed.
Your email comments talked about hunting’s wonderful heritage, all the land hunters paid for with “duck stamps” and how no species can thrive without scientific management. You have bought into the justification propaganda the NRA fashions to sell more guns and ammo. All the land hunters may have helped set aside does not justify killing the animals that occupy that land — for their own good.
Cruelty by any other name is still cruelty.

Some hunter apparently couldn’t wait for a pheasant so he unloaded his 12 gauge on the Discover Pass sign at Eide Road – mid-August 2013.

12 thoughts on “The “Conservationists” are about to go hunting – again”

  3. I have watched Life After People and was amazed how quickly nature can take back the land we humans have appropriated. It doesn’t take thousands of years either. It is a wonderful hope that things can heal in favor of the wild. Example is the Chernobyl section of Russia which was vacated by people because of contamination-animals are moving back into the area and living in the buildings once inhabited by people.

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  4. The forest has taken over the village of Pripyat near the Chernobyl disaster. A stunning example of how nature returns…when we are no more.

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  5. Management rationale: We, Maine hunters, need to use radio collared dogs to chase and tree bears, leg snares to catch and hold them until we can get there and shoot them. We have to do this to manage bears so that the population will not get out of control. In how many instances do we hear this rationale for “sports” killing, especially against predators? How often has non-man-management been tried, let the animal ecology manage itself? Yellowstone wolves and bears manage themselves. Might this be true if tried outside the parks? This is the basis of hunters’ argument that they are true environmentalists because they manage animal populations. This central idea of wildlife agency and hunters’ argument needs challenging. Is it true that bears and lions and wolves and other critters will over-populate and get out of control? Should we be thanking hunters for their sportsmen ethic of any chase is fair chase and necessary killing?

    How about this idea? Abolish hunting of predators and maybe all animals and see what happens. Then, if problems arise, come up with protocols for dealing with the issues with preferences for nonlethal control or management, lethal only if necessary mainly for chronic offenders for which there seems to be no other option. Nature had millennium to work out wildlife ecology, predator prey balance and the give and take and waxing and waning of populations. Then came man-management, the wildlife agencies and their management by hunting with little question as to the necessity.

    Roger Hewitt
    Great Falls MT

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