So you don’t get the idea I go around unfairly picking on small grassroots groups, here’s an excerpt from my book, Exposing the Big Game: Living Targets of a Dying Sport, wherein I take on the Goliath of all national green groups for siding with hunting…
Sport hunters have enjoyed so much laudation of late they’re beginning to cast themselves as conservation heroes. What’s worse is that many modern, influential green groups are swallowing that blather, hook, line and sinker. Maybe they ought to reread the words of Sierra Club founder, John Muir:
“Surely a better time must be drawing nigh when godlike human beings will become truly humane, and learn to put their animal fellow mortals in their hearts instead of on their backs or in their dinners. In the meantime we may just as well as not learn to live clean, innocent lives instead of slimy, bloody ones. All…
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Exposing the Big Game 
I suspect wildlife “conservation” and management were started in the wrong direction when Gifford Pinchot was selected as the first chief of the United States Forest Service rather than John Muir. Pinchot was focused on nature solely as a resource for human use rather than viewing wilderness and wild lives as having value in themselves. He did not have Muir’s sense of wonder and empathy for living beings.
Hunters may have felt the need to whitewash and excuse their “sport” as the animal rights movement gained more momentum, and the ugly side of the killing was revealed, first in print and then on the Internet. It has also been a cynical attempt to co-opt the conservation movement and redefine trophy hunting and game farms as actually being good for the environment and the future of the victim species. They adopted as their patron saint Theodore Roosevelt, whose killing sprees were legendary and sickening.
The sell-out of the big conservation organizations has been shameful. They are in a race to get the most members, the most corporate sponsors, and the most funding (partially to pay the big salaries of the CEOs). Instead of focusing on real preservation they are hiding behind “sustainable use” to justify collaboration with logging and hunting groups, here and around the world. They also dropped their support of population control when it became a politically incorrect topic.
The WWF is one of the worst in my opinion. (By the way Prince Philip, the royal loafer and mass killer, has been president emeritus of WWF). The organization has been collaborating with loggers in Africa and promoting “sustainable” use and development. This has not only resulted in more deforestation and in the process opened up logging roads and increased population near the forests. Thus it has also increased the hunting and killing for bushmeat, including gorillas and chimps.
In the book “Eating Apes,” Dale Peterson tells of a trip to a WWF office in Africa. He describes a big coffee table with the WWF logos done in beautiful flowery designs. Upon closer inspection, he discovered the artwork was composed of thousands of butterfly wings. This is conservation like collecting living specimens and pinning them to a board!
Fortunately, we can support organizations that do not ally themselves with hunting. The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is a favorite. Captain Paul Watson has never sold out.
NOTE: The mention of Thoreau’s concern for the hare and Abbey’s disdain for killing brings up one thing I always found jarring in Abbey. In “Desert Solitaire” he notes that he would rather kill a man than a snake, and he shared space with both snakes and mice. However, after watching a harmless rabbit eating and drinking, he killed it with a rock and asserted afterward “I try but cannot feel any sense of guilt. I examine by soul: white as snow. I check my hands: not a trace of blood.” Strange. Maybe that was an aberration and Abbey moved on.
Unfortunately, few have Muir’s sense of wonder and empathy for living beings.