Why Hunting Isn't Conservation Article

[Squincher]

People like Bixby are no threat to hunting, because only already like minded people embrace their stupidity. No, the real danger to hunting is closeted liberals masquerading as hunters who describe this sort of drivel as "cogent," because they can't bring themselves to disavow any part of the liberal ideology. Most of the usual cast of such characters have already made their appearances in this thread.

 

[jolemons]

People like Bixby are no threat to hunting, because only already like minded people embrace their stupidity. No, the real danger to hunting is closeted liberals masquerading as hunters who describe this sort of drivel as "cogent," because they can't bring themselves to disavow any part of the liberal ideology. Most of the usual cast of such characters have already made their appearances in this thread.

Glad for your participation, conjecture and personal attacks. Feel free to make an intellectual contribution by presenting an argument against the article or any of the replies to the post.

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[Rob5589]

Individually, no. Collectively, yes. That's what pro-hunting groups have been doing for us. If not, we don't stand a chance and as another poster aptly stated above, we'll be steam-rolled.

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Conservation is just one part. If it wasn't, states would have no quotas, limits, male to female ratios, either sex vs male hunting, etc. It really comes down to; we love the adventure, the hunt, the camaraderie, being with family, eating what we kill. The sugar coating of hunting to make it seem like anything else is a ruse, and tiring.

 

[Laramie]

I don't think the greater body of peer reviewed literature supports this statement. I think what you mean to say is if you want to keep tag numbers at or above current limits then you can't have a healthy wolf population. But don't conflate that with ecological carrying capacity of ungulate herds.

Edit: Btw, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being anti-wolf because they will affect huntable herd size. IMO it's just best to come out and say that's the reason.

I didn't word my response well... Agreed. If we want to keep populations near the top of caring capacity, we can't have healthy wolf populations. What I find really humorous is Buzz liked your post and has in the past commented pro wolf but in another thread argued profusely for increased resident opportunity.

Again, you were completely correct. There can be fairly stable big game populations with a healthy wolf population... There would just be a lot fewer game animals around.

 

[Bubblehide]

Glad for your participation, conjecture and personal attacks. Feel free to make an intellectual contribution by presenting an argument against the article or any of the replies to the post.

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Okay I'll bite. Just like one of your previous posts, nothing but emotion and opinion is presented, no facts, no data; just feel good crap, and what is clamed is simply wrong i.e. the feds do NOT manage game, the states do. There is zero substance to what you present here. Not only that, but the decades of financial contribution hunters have made to conservation is not even presented. Furthermore this guy refers to himself as have contributed to conservation; unfortunately he has not, not one dime, not one penny. Even the organizations he works with do not contribute financially to actual conservation. What they do do is spend a ton of money on their anti-hunting agenda, taking Game and Fish departments and USF&W to court over issues largely involving hunting. This dude and the organizations he promotes do not give a crap about wildlife, their record clearly exhibits that. You are clearly here to promote your agenda, and agenda's like this guys, and for no other viable reason.

If you, this guy and organizations you and he support actually cared about or ecosystems, you would be all for dissolving big farming. I mean, just think about all the billions of acres that have been completely destroyed by farming practices. That land will neve be restored to it's natural state. The natural life within those billions of acres is forever gone, and will never be restored. And to think, you think hunting is a tragedy, pufft!. Clearly you haven't a clue, just like this guy and the organization he and you promote.

 

[Marbles]

@Bubblehide I think the post by @jolemons you quoted should only be taken in the context of the post by @Squincher he was replying to. So, I don't think there was anything thrown out as bate intended for others to bite on.

Your post is significantly better than the emotional drivel @jolemons was responding to as well.

 

[Bubblehide]

@Bubblehide I think the post by @jolemons you quoted should only be taken in the context of the post by @Squincher he was replying to. So, I don't think there was anything thrown out as bate intended for others to bite on.

Your post is significantly better than the emotional drivel @jolemons was responding to as well.

Jolemons is the OP. In the post I quoted he requested an intellectual contribution, despite him failing to meet the standard he requests. I simply provided what he requested but could not provide himself. So in short, I was responding directly to him, his OP here and the post in which I quoted him.

 

[Marbles]

Jolemons is the OP. In the post I quoted he requested an intellectual contribution, despite him failing to meet the standard he requests. I simply provided what he requested but could not provide himself. So in short, I was responding directly to him, his OP here and the post in which I quoted him.

If all of @jolemons posts in this thread (over 10) fail to meet that standard, than you certainly failed as well. Unless you are arguing that most hunters actually don't contribut to conservation when you say

Furthermore this guy refers to himself as have contributed to conservation; unfortunately he has not, not one dime, not one penny.

as Kevin Bixby has at least payed for hunting license and those cost more than "one penny."

While the organization he works for does appear to predominantly focuse on activism, it also carries out habitat restoration, making

Even the organizations he works with do not contribute financially to actual conservation.

a patently false statement if taken literally.

Your argument on farming can be taken generously as saying that these organizations focuse on the wrong thing. However, combined with your word choice it would be reasonable to take it as a red herring, after all, are you (and most hunters) "all about dissolving large farming?"

I can choose to interpret things less than literally and broadly agree (which was my first choice); but the standard you have insisted on forces me to reject your arguments as falsehoods and logical fallacies.

 

[Marbles]

I heard this guy on a podcast, so read the article to see what his points were. Surprisingly, he makes a cogent argument that I tend to agree with. I've been concerned about hunters going all in with the hunting is conservation justification lately.

Why Hunting Isn’t Conservation, and Why It Matters

By Kevin Bixby Featured Image (c) laura c carlson, Canid Collapse, graphite, watercolor, and mulberry ink, 2020 In late December 2014, I received a call from

rewilding.org

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I'm going to be a little lazy in expressing my opinion, it is a long article that touches on a lot.

He makes some good points, he also makes several garbage arguments. Some of those argumets have been addressed already in this thread. The article below addresses some of them as well. https://furbearerconservation.com/b...ut-hunting-activism-and-wildlife-conservation

He also has no problem ignoring things that don't suit him. Take his claim that hunters overstate the threat to hunting. He reference The Human Society while completely ignoring the SPCA, which opposes all sport hunting, even if the animals are used for food. Does little to make me trust him and to me confirms the fact that he is just trying to remove the strongest argument for hunting, being that it generates motivation for conservation efforts in a way that nothing else does.

Put different, I can agree that hunting is not defacto conservation, however my agreement goes no further, without hunting we would not have adequate conservation and there is no group positioned to replace the role of sportsmen.

 

[jolemons]

I'm going to be a little lazy in expressing my opinion, it is a long article that touches on a lot.

He makes some good points, he also makes several garbage arguments. Some of those argumets have been addressed already in this thread. The article below addresses some of them as well. https://furbearerconservation.com/b...ut-hunting-activism-and-wildlife-conservation

He also has no problem ignoring things that don't suit him. Take his claim that hunters overstate the threat to hunting. He reference The Human Society while completely ignoring the SPCA, which opposes all sport hunting, even if the animals are used for food. Does little to make me trust him and to me confirms the fact that he is just trying to remove the strongest argument for hunting, being that it generates motivation for conservation efforts in a way that nothing else does.

Put different, I can agree that hunting is not defacto conservation, however my agreement goes no further, without hunting we would not have adequate conservation and there is no group positioned to replace the role of sportsmen.

Agreed, which is basically the point that I intended to make. Hunting, imo, is not conservation. In the process, I raised the hackles of several members, which was not my intention.

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[jolemons]

Jolemons is the OP. In the post I quoted he requested an intellectual contribution, despite him failing to meet the standard he requests. I simply provided what he requested but could not provide himself. So in short, I was responding directly to him, his OP here and the post in which I quoted him.

I was responding directly to @Squincher.

If you have read my replies and disagree, I appreciate the debate. The body of argument that I have been upholding is that hunting is not conservation. With that, the pro hunting NGOs and individuals who are hanging their hat on that as our primary defensible position for justifying hunting in the face of increasing scrutiny and making a grave mistake. The reason, it is an argument that can be easily washed away and dispelled in the face of the general public. If you read anything other than that into my posts on this thread, you were mistaken.

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[fort fireman]

I was responding directly to @Squincher.

If you have read my replies and disagree, I appreciate the debate. The body of argument that I have been upholding is that hunting is not conservation. With that, the pro hunting NGOs and individuals who are hanging their hat on that as our primary defensible position for justifying hunting in the face of increasing scrutiny and making a grave mistake. The reason, it is an argument that can be easily washed away and dispelled in the face of the general public. If you read anything other than that into my posts on this thread, you were mistaken.

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Hunting is conservation though. It is just one aspect of conservation. No one is claiming it is the only form of conservation, and it has many other benefit like tradition , food, enjoyment but it is non the less conservation. Hunting is also one of the only things that fund most of the other aspects of conservation. I simply don’t agree with his argument that he presents to justify his position and I don’t believe his article was in any way presented in any form of good faith. He misrepresented himself as a hunter when it is obvious he is not and used weak argument to illicit an emotional response from those that already have anti hunting leaning. You agree with his arguments and that is fine. I just can’t jump on his train of thought.

The only point He made that I can get behind is his take on the competition killing of coyotes and other “ undesirable “ animals. It does make it hard to make the argument from a high ground when stuff like that happens for the anti crowd to exploit.

 

[Hoodie]

The only point He made that I can get behind is his take on the competition killing of coyotes and other “ undesirable “ animals. It does make it hard to make the argument from a high ground when stuff like that happens for the anti crowd to exploit.

This is the crux here.

The fact that this guy opened with a story about standing over a bunch of dead coyote carcasses from a competition is all he needs to seem more reasonable than us to any reader who doesn´t hunt.

Those people are going to be the bulk of the people who vote on ballot box biology initiatives. If we want to make the argument that hunters are just as concerned about ecosystem health and conserving species as anyone else, predator killing competitions are a piss poor way of doing it.

Photos from the aftermath of a coyote killing competition are pretty much ready made advertisements for anti-hunting groups.

 

[HighUintas]

Don't really care about his beliefs. I'm only focusing on his arguments.

We're all-in on the hunting is conservation movement, which IMO is a weak leg to stand on. If we don't figure out how to assimilate with the non-hunting majority we're in trouble. Ballot box biology and policy that is created via the popular vote is not going in our favor. If you don't consider his arguments so that we can realize and correct our short comings, you're being naive.

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I agree. It is a weak argument. This is a scenario of needing to know our opposition in order to be adaptive and fight for ourselves.

If we as hunters aren't willing to do more than paint all antihunters with the same broad brush, complain, and not try to adapt our method of protecting hunting rights to the current society, we're doomed.

 

[Hoodie]

I agree. It is a weak argument. This is a scenario of needing to know our opposition in order to be adaptive and fight for ourselves.

If we as hunters aren't willing to do more than paint all antihunters with the same broad brush, complain, and not try to adapt our method of protecting hunting rights to the current society, we're doomed.

It´s a weak argument for conservation broadly, i.e. hunters often care about things pertaining to the species they hunt to the exclusion of other important stuff. No serious hunter in western Oregon is stoked that there is more habitat today for spotted owls then there was in the 90s, because the moratorium on federal lands timber harvest tanked the ungulate populations in areas formerly teeming with blacktails and Roosevelts.

It also didn´t work to recover the owl populations, but that´s a different discussion.

¨Hunting is conservation¨ is a very strong argument as applied to species that actually get hunted. I don´t see how anyone could look at historical population trends of whitetail deer, wild turkeys, and elk and say otherwise.

If we want to better our image from a conservation standpoint, we need to expand the circle of shit we care about (and advocate for) to more than just stuff that grows big antlers or horns.

That doesn´t mean allowing predators to decimate ungulate populations. But it might mean tolerating their presence on the landscape. It doesn´t mean all of our federal forest lands need to be left to turn into old growth, but having some old growth is absolutely critical. None of this stuff has to be all or nothing, which is too often how people on both sides of it act.

 

[Red Letters]

Hunting, Trophy hunting specifically is the epitome of a renewable resource, that seems to fit most peoples definition of conservation.

 

[HighUintas]

It´s a weak argument for conservation broadly, i.e. hunters often care about things pertaining to the species they hunt to the exclusion of other important stuff. No serious hunter in western Oregon is stoked that there is more habitat today for spotted owls then there was in the 90s, because the moratorium on federal lands timber harvest tanked the ungulate populations in areas formerly teeming with blacktails and Roosevelts.

It also didn´t work to recover the owl populations, but that´s a different discussion.

¨Hunting is conservation¨ is a very strong argument as applied to species that actually get hunted. I don´t see how anyone could look at historical population trends of whitetail deer, wild turkeys, and elk and say otherwise.

If we want to better our image from a conservation standpoint, we need to expand the circle of shit we care about (and advocate for) to more than just stuff that grows big antlers or horns.

That doesn´t mean allowing predators to decimate ungulate populations. But it might mean tolerating their presence on the landscape. It doesn´t mean all of our federal forest lands need to be left to turn into old growth, but having some old growth is absolutely critical. None of this stuff has to be all or nothing, which is too often how people on both sides of it act.

I completely agree with you.

There are different understandings of what conservation means, depending on who you are. To that guy, he means conservation as allowing all species to do their natural thing with very limited human influence other than making sure species don't go extinct or become endangered. If he had his way, I'm sure we'd be hunting very little.

I'm all for all conservation... But I realize that ecosystems are NEVER going back to how they were before the large presence of humans, unless we're all gone or greatly reduced.

For example, there might be very little or no realized ecological benefit to having more than a couple hundred wolves in each state, because their exact existence/role of 200 years ago doesn't exist anymore. There used to be elk all over the plains along the Missouri River and barely any large game in the Frank Church 200 years ago. Why don't we just year down all fences from Utah to Illinois so that bison can roam free again? I bet that guy wouldn't like that. It would probably require a reduced consumption of energy to the point where he wouldn't have power for his computer he's typing on and wouldn't be able to drive his electric car who's batteries are going to end up landfilled rather than recycled

 

[HighUintas]

Good points. To play devil's advocate, what if the source of funding for wildlife agencies changed so that non-hunters became the primary source of funding. Since you feel we, the hunter, should have more say in how game is managed, more hunting opportunities, etc., wouldn't that mean that we lose that expectation in that scenario? The non-hunter then would get more say? That is one of my concerns because some states have had proposed legislation in committee that would do just that.

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Yes, whether we like it or not, because government and government agencies follow the money. My biggest fear is that anti hunting groups end up as the primary funding source.

 

[MilhouseG19]

As a new person on this site, I would like to thank everyone for this discussion. I know like 2% about any of this beyond the basics, so this is helpful in learning more about hunting and conservation beyond just getting a tag and harvesting an animal.

 

[crossone]

Lies and snake oil. I know it, you know it, and the American People know it. Hunting is conservation. To use a resource wisely. You want to know why it is correct for hunters to have a larger voice? Because we care! We see what's happing on the ground in real time. You want to know why? Because we're there! Every year! I refuse to argue with these big city loudmouths who are paid by Federally funded groups like The Center for Biological Diversity to write garbage like this for consumption by other big city loudmouths to support their ideologies about the way things work in nature. These are the same losers who declared that the wolf population in Idaho was going to bring in a bazzilion dollars per year in Birkinstock clad hippies who would be pounding the mountains flat with their sandals to watch the wolves and that the haze from their doobies would blot out the stars.

Nope. No hippies. They don't want to walk through a wildlife desert like the Frank Church anymore than we do.

Nah, I agree that contests to kill coyotes is in poor taste and I wouldn't participate but it will be a cold day when I sign on to this losers way of looking at things.

Cross