I’ve never really got into the whole hunting and conservation debate.
So it was much to my surprise when it was recently brought to my attention that a popular Canadian hunting blog had used a back-of-the-envelope definition I gave a while back on what I think it means to be an effective conservationist in one of their articles.
In an old blog, I had simply said that:
A conservationist is anybody who dedicates some portion of their time towards the protection and preservation of biodiversity and the environment.
Being an effective conservationist just involves being proactive in thinking about the ways you personally can make the biggest difference with your time and money.
In their article, the folks at HunterConservationist.com used this definition as a framework for what it means to be, what they call, “a Hunter Conservationist“.
I read their article with some interest because from the attention that I’ve paid to the trophy hunting debate, it seems to me that most wildlife-lovers form an opinion about hunting–particularly of African megafauna–based on a gut-feeling, and then stick their fingers in their ears and fail to listen to what “the other side” are saying.
My own views on hunting in the name of conservation are case-specific. Overall I’m not a fan of trophy hunting and would never do it myself, but I think that at this moment in time, on balance, the evidence shows that “well-managed” hunting can indeed have net ecological benefits.
A recent letter signed by 133 scientists in the journal Science recently argued that:
In African trophy hunting countries, more land has been conserved under trophy hunting than under national parks, and ending trophy hunting risks land conversion and biodiversity loss. Poorly managed trophy hunting can cause local population declines, but unless better land-use alternatives exist, hunting reforms—which have proved effective—should be prioritized over bans. Positive population impacts of well-regulated hunting have been demonstrated for many species, including rhinos, markhor, argali, bighorn sheep, and many African ungulates.
For sure, there are instances of poor hunting practices, and these should be stopped. There are also examples where the money derived from hunts fails to make its way to local people. For me, especially in places where viable alternatives for preventing (much more worrying) habitat conversion are unavailable, this calls for improved and fairer practices, rather than outright bans.
I ultimately would like to live in a world without trophy hunting, but for the sake of pragmatism, I don’t think we’re close to being there yet and I think there are two other things of note worth saying. If you’re worried about animal welfare, I think there are much more pressing problems to be tackled first–namely certain factory farming practices. Likewise for conservation, one of the reasons I’ve been fairly slow to muddle into the hunting debate is that I think other problems are of far greater and more pressing scope.
Circling back to the Hunter Conservationist blog–which wasn’t actually about trophy hunting at all (they just got me rambling) I do think that the first step to any meaningful dialogue about conservation issues is to understand other people’s perceptions.
And that starts with exposing yourself to different opinions.
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