I was watching a PBS documentary on the Alaska Lands Act and how the concept of protecting the wilderness was met with opposition by local resource extractors who had the patrician perception that the land was theirs and theirs alone and who wanted no part of any new ideas such as land preservation for the sake of the wildlife and nature itself.
The resident’s closed minded stance was reminiscent of that taken by the owner of a bookstore in Lincoln City on the Oregon Coast who refused to carry my book, Exposing the Big Game: Living Targets of a Dying Sport, on the grounds that there’s “no market for an anti-hunting book” around there.
While I do not doubt there are a higher percentage of hunters in that smallish tourist town compared to the national average, I don’t buy that no one living there or travelling through would be interested in expanding their knowledge on the subject of animal protection. There are certainly plenty of new pro-hunting books and magazines out these days, some of which were for sale in that very shop.
Based on what she told me, it’s clear that the bookstore owners’ snubbing of Exposing the Big Game was due to there being hunters among her family and friends and thus she did not want anything in the store that might expose the dark underbelly of sport hunting. It was just another case of someone doing their part to suppress the truth about the myriad of malicious ways that the animals of the Earth are being exploited for the benefit of just one narcissistic, overly-acquisitive species.
Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson
Exposing the Big Game 