Sports Afield

Rhino horn is now worth more than cocaine or gold. A single horn can sell for half a million dollars if delivered to the right customers - usually in Southeast Asia, though increasing to a wider range of countries. Not surprisingly, the illegal killing of these animals has escalated ferociously in the last number of years, and horrific images of the great brutes disfigured by chain saws now appear frequently in news reports. The ongoing slaughter has raised the question as to whether or not legalizing the horn trade is the answer.

The most recent surveys of public attitudes toward regulated hunting in the United States indicate that more than 75 percent of those responding support this activity.  Hunters seem to just accept this new information as one more inevitable and self-evident truth. It is this kind of reaction, however, that helps engender the great malaise in the hunting world: the belief that we have no need to reach out to the broad public, can keep representing ourselves to ourselves, and thus be continuously reinforced in the notion that all is well. Yet we know very well that not all is well.

Early conservation pioneers succeeded because they understood how to convey the importance of their ideals to the public. However the conservation movement has to a large extent moved away from an agenda of trying to convince society of its social, cultural, and economic value. We no longer strive for the hearts of our nations’ publics. The conservation community has replaced this with an emphasis on membership rosters and obtaining political influence, both often emphasizing specific issues that can hardly be viewed as being of the greatest public value or concern.

The listing in May 2008 of the polar bear as "threatened" by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) has been a highly controversial decision. In the first of a series of articles, the author discusses the special place this inspiring animal has held in human cultures and the complicated scenario that an interface between the climate change debate, wildlife science, and the ESA presents for hunters and the sustainable use of wildlife.

In the area of natural history, Theodore Roosevelt was beyond question the most learned of American presidents (with the possible exception of Thomas Jefferson), and with respect to enacting policies for the protection of wildlife and their habitats, he remains indisputably the greatest.

This is the second article in a series examining the polar bear, its conservation status, and its listing as "threatened" under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's decision to list this species, based upon predictions of climate-change-induced reductions to polar bear habitat, should be viewed as a powerful signal to the hunting community worldwide. Does climate change open a brand new frontier in the debate over sustainable use and hunting's conservation value?

The hunting community needs to demonstrate its commitment to conservation and to do so by directly speaking to and engaging the general public. Our safe ledges, from which hunters look down on the uncertainty of public discourse, can keep us for only a little longer. Social, economic, and ecological realities leave hunters absolutely no choice. Hunters must either convince society of hunting’s modern relevance and value, or perish.

Over long and now misted millennia the rhythm of our human existence was the same. Pursuing our sacred and relentless desire to survive, we hunted and gathered the living things that miraculously suited our physical needs for food and warmth. Across endless wild environments we perfected the one great arc of our existence, the first great act of globalization. We marched slowly out of Africa and encircled our world, driven by need and curiosity and fuelled by the death of wild others. Perfecting weapons within, we fashioned stone, honed bone and wood, and hunted our way to modernity.

A third revolution of wildlife conservation must occur or society will watch the miracle of wildlife recovery die. This third revolution must engender a massive mobilization of intellect and passion for the cause, but it must begin with an all-out effort to bring conservation history to the citizenry of Canada and the USA. In the absence of this, all other efforts will fail. 

Wildlife does not exist by accident. It thrives today in North America because of a wondrous network of policies, laws and financial support structures largely put in place and maintained by the small percentage of us who hunt and fish. Perhaps in some distant future society at large will pay for what we have carried for a century or more; but even if this were true would not the history of our achievement be worth telling? The reality is that no feasible alternative model for wildlife conservation is yet within our reach, and may never be.