1 thought on “Beyond the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation”
“It’s time to stop actively supporting and passively allowing hunting, and time to stigmatize it. It’s time to stop being conned and cowed by hunters, time to stop pampering and coddling them, time to get them off the government’s duck-and-deer dole, time to stop thinking of wild animals as “resources” and “game,” and start thinking of them as sentient beings that deserve our wonder and respect, time to stop allowing hunting to be creditable by calling it “sport” and “recreation.”
Joy Williams “The Killing Game“
Wildlife management, as applied to wolf (wolf managers) has turned the meaning of “management” into count and guesstimate kill quotas“kill” meaning because most wolf managers work under and were trained under the concept of the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation (NAMW), which is consumptive and hunter and trapper focused, wildlife management if primarily for hunters. Practitioners of this hunter management scheme see themselves as hunter conservationists. Wolves come out of this model as competitors for hunters, vermin for ranchers (even ranchers on public lands), nuisance animals for portions of the general public, as trophies, or as pelts. A common thread runs throughout here in that wildlife is seen as valuable, useful, or very expendable, or as a renewable resource for recreational killing or trapping, not as an existential living being with a right to life, to be observed and appreciated, valued, and largely left alone. Wildlife under the NAMW model is seen as something to be managed instead of mostly left alone in coexistence and in a nonconsumptive relationship with humans. There has been some movement toward real conservation in the last 50-70 years, to balanced ecological conservation, supported by some laws like ESA, wildlife NGOs, the general supportive population and wildlife activists, Yellowstone National Park, other parks, and refuges. And some wildlife biologists work for them. So, some wildlife biologists, are not so much distorting wildlife ecology by “managing” (aka killing it.) So management in the killing or otherwise consumptive meaning does not apply to them but does to state wildlife management agencies, USDA Wildlife Services, even USFWS is overshadowed by NAMW management and by state management.
Right now there is a battle going on between the old, archaic NAMW Management, on the international scale by CITES, and the emerging but struggling coexistence-rewilding a true conservation model, it is a conceptual and applied struggle. The outcome often looks like we are headed for a mass extinction outcome as wildlife is under assault everywhere, barely holding on, diminishing, and true conservation is resisted by old school consumptive models, hunters, trappers, rancher culture states, wildlife agencies, and conservative politicians. On the international level, CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) is an international agreement between governments. Both wildlife management (NAMW) and CITES work on a consumptive model trying to manage wildlife consumption at sustainable levels rather than having a nonconsumptive, coexistence, tolerance, wildlife largely left alone, to be appreciated and observed Model.
In America, state wildlife agencies are “funded to kill” and to focus on hunters and fishermen via hunting license sales and excise tax distribution via the Pittman-Robertson and Dingell-Johnson Acts.
It is time to move on to a coexistence, non-consumptive model of wildlife tolerance, appreciation, and right to live in and of itself, as other sentient beings, not as commodities. The old models are drivers of extinction, not conservation.
Exposing the Big Game 
“It’s time to stop actively supporting and passively allowing hunting, and time to stigmatize it. It’s time to stop being conned and cowed by hunters, time to stop pampering and coddling them, time to get them off the government’s duck-and-deer dole, time to stop thinking of wild animals as “resources” and “game,” and start thinking of them as sentient beings that deserve our wonder and respect, time to stop allowing hunting to be creditable by calling it “sport” and “recreation.”
Joy Williams “The Killing Game“
Wildlife management, as applied to wolf (wolf managers) has turned the meaning of “management” into count and guesstimate kill quotas“kill” meaning because most wolf managers work under and were trained under the concept of the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation (NAMW), which is consumptive and hunter and trapper focused, wildlife management if primarily for hunters. Practitioners of this hunter management scheme see themselves as hunter conservationists. Wolves come out of this model as competitors for hunters, vermin for ranchers (even ranchers on public lands), nuisance animals for portions of the general public, as trophies, or as pelts. A common thread runs throughout here in that wildlife is seen as valuable, useful, or very expendable, or as a renewable resource for recreational killing or trapping, not as an existential living being with a right to life, to be observed and appreciated, valued, and largely left alone. Wildlife under the NAMW model is seen as something to be managed instead of mostly left alone in coexistence and in a nonconsumptive relationship with humans.
There has been some movement toward real conservation in the last 50-70 years, to balanced ecological conservation, supported by some laws like ESA, wildlife NGOs, the general supportive population and wildlife activists, Yellowstone National Park, other parks, and refuges. And some wildlife biologists work for them. So, some wildlife biologists, are not so much distorting wildlife ecology by “managing” (aka killing it.) So management in the killing or otherwise consumptive meaning does not apply to them but does to state wildlife management agencies, USDA Wildlife Services, even USFWS is overshadowed by NAMW management and by state management.
Right now there is a battle going on between the old, archaic NAMW Management, on the international scale by CITES, and the emerging but struggling coexistence-rewilding a true conservation model, it is a conceptual and applied struggle. The outcome often looks like we are headed for a mass extinction outcome as wildlife is under assault everywhere, barely holding on, diminishing, and true conservation is resisted by old school consumptive models, hunters, trappers, rancher culture states, wildlife agencies, and conservative politicians. On the international level, CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) is an international agreement between governments. Both wildlife management (NAMW) and CITES work on a consumptive model trying to manage wildlife consumption at sustainable levels rather than having a nonconsumptive, coexistence, tolerance, wildlife largely left alone, to be appreciated and observed Model.
In America, state wildlife agencies are “funded to kill” and to focus on hunters and fishermen via hunting license sales and excise tax distribution via the Pittman-Robertson and Dingell-Johnson Acts.
It is time to move on to a coexistence, non-consumptive model of wildlife tolerance, appreciation, and right to live in and of itself, as other sentient beings, not as commodities. The old models are drivers of extinction, not conservation.