Post by Woody Williams on Jan 12, 2007 8:49:33 GMT -5
Wildlife problems start with us
By Harry Harju
hjharju@bresnan.net
CHEYENNE - I'm constantly amazed at how excited some people get about a
hunter killing a deer or elk, but how little they care about the killing
they do.
Every human on the planet is responsible for wildlife dying and
disappearing. That includes the animal rights folks, the animal lovers, the
vegetarians, the hunters and people who hate and fear animals.
Our polarized, politically correct society seems to be made up of people in
favor of wildlife because they just love their cute little fuzzy faces, but
breed and pave them out of existence every day.
There are those who don't like killing, but who would kill me because I
hunt. There are crazies who bomb laboratories that use animals in research,
but then they take advantage of the results of that research.
There are men who only hunt to get horns or antlers to display, and those
who hunt for meat, and also those who could care less. The latter outnumber
all of the other groups, but the former are much more vocal.
I spend lots of money on wildlife every year, and if I didn't hunt, I'd
still spend some, but considerably less. I plead guilty to the accusation
that I like to have wildlife around because I hunt. But, like all hunters, I
spend more time watching wildlife of all kinds than other groups, too, and
probably appreciate, value, and understand wildlife a lot better than those
who don't hunt.
Hunters are the folks who banded together at the turn of the century to get
wildlife management started, to stop market hunting, to close hunting
seasons during much of the year, to get bag limits implemented and to
preserve the big game animals they wanted to hunt.
All of this also was a benefit to animals that weren't hunted.
Meanwhile, the rest of society was busy eliminating wildlife through market
and illegal hunting and converting wildlife habitat into cities, farms,
roads, mines, polluted streams, pastures, clear-cuts and prairies where
forests once existed.
Except for market hunting, what the rest of society once did pretty much
continues today, while hunters have created organizations like the Rocky
Mountain Elk Foundation, the National Wild Turkey Federation, Ducks
Unlimited and Pheasants Forever to try and preserve habitat for one species
or another in the face of the rapidly increasing human population.
Each fall, the Game and Fish Department urges hunters not to display the
animals they killed in the backs of pickups or on top of cars or trailers,
for fear of offending a non-hunter.
Well, strip mines, oil fields, over-grazed pastures, sprawling subdivisions,
clear cuts that used to be habitat for white-tailed deer, forests that could
stand some cutting, wind farms, power lines, strip malls, over-fished
oceans, dried up and polluted streams, trash along the road, highway fences
impassible to big game, dried up and over-grazed rangelands and human
populations increasing at exponential rates offend me, but nobody seems to
be changing those things.
Ultimately, it won't be some guy with a dead deer in the back of his pickup
that eliminates hunting and most wildlife; it will be growth of the human
population.
The major problem for wildlife anywhere on the planet is humans. Those who
profess to love wildlife are all living where wildlife once lived.
Fish and wildlife don't live on pavement, under houses and malls, beneath
high-rise buildings or underneath mines and well pads.
If you drive or heat your house with electricity or natural gas, you
contribute to killing wildlife in the areas where development to produce
coal, oil, and natural gas is occurring.
Destroying habitat kills wildlife, whether it's temporary (if 50 years is
temporary) or not.
Animal lovers wearing synthetic clothes are contributors to destruction of
wildlife to produce the materials to make the clothes.
Ditto, clothing manufactured with the product of cotton fields, which aren't
exactly wildlife habitat.
Diverse habitats have consistently been turned into fields of corn, wheat,
cotton, soybeans, and other crops useful to man but which do not provide all
of the life requirements for wildlife, especially once the crop is harvested
and cattle are turned into the stubble, as often happens today. With today's
clean farming methods, farmlands are much less valuable to wildlife, and the
species that do well in farmlands bear little resemblance to species that
inhabited those areas before farming.
Over 75 percent of the world's population lives in cities these days, and
that proportion will only increase.
The population of the United States is projected to increase by another 100
million within 50 years.
Most of these people will have little exposure to wildlife and therefore
will probably not care about it.
The negative effects of the human population on wildlife are amply
illustrated in Europe, Asia, and Africa. With the exception of animals like
white-tailed deer, Canada geese, rats, mice, pigeons, house sparrows and
starlings, most of the species that inhabited North American metropolitan
areas before cities are gone.
There once were antelope all over Cheyenne, but they have been squeezed out
past the suburbs, which keep squeezing them even farther away.
So, before you get too excited over a dead deer in the back of a pickup, or
a kid who killed an elk, remember that more humans and bigger developments
are the real reasons why fish and wildlife ultimately disappear, and the
folks with the dead deer are contributing money to keep wildlife around.
That includes all wildlife, because license money also funds work done on
animals that aren't hunted.
In Wyoming, those who don't hunt contribute very little or nothing toward
preserving wildlife.
Those people staring back at you from the mirror are all part of the problem
for wildlife, because we continue to outbreed the rabbits and use up more of
their space.
Harry Harju, a wildlife biologist, hunter, and angler, has advised hunters
and outdoor writers on Wyoming hunting for 27 years. He can be reached by
mail care of Outdoors Editor, Wyoming Tribune-Eagle, 702 W. Lincolnway,
Cheyenne, WY, 82001, by email, hjharju@bresnan.net, or phone at 638-6874.
By Harry Harju
hjharju@bresnan.net
CHEYENNE - I'm constantly amazed at how excited some people get about a
hunter killing a deer or elk, but how little they care about the killing
they do.
Every human on the planet is responsible for wildlife dying and
disappearing. That includes the animal rights folks, the animal lovers, the
vegetarians, the hunters and people who hate and fear animals.
Our polarized, politically correct society seems to be made up of people in
favor of wildlife because they just love their cute little fuzzy faces, but
breed and pave them out of existence every day.
There are those who don't like killing, but who would kill me because I
hunt. There are crazies who bomb laboratories that use animals in research,
but then they take advantage of the results of that research.
There are men who only hunt to get horns or antlers to display, and those
who hunt for meat, and also those who could care less. The latter outnumber
all of the other groups, but the former are much more vocal.
I spend lots of money on wildlife every year, and if I didn't hunt, I'd
still spend some, but considerably less. I plead guilty to the accusation
that I like to have wildlife around because I hunt. But, like all hunters, I
spend more time watching wildlife of all kinds than other groups, too, and
probably appreciate, value, and understand wildlife a lot better than those
who don't hunt.
Hunters are the folks who banded together at the turn of the century to get
wildlife management started, to stop market hunting, to close hunting
seasons during much of the year, to get bag limits implemented and to
preserve the big game animals they wanted to hunt.
All of this also was a benefit to animals that weren't hunted.
Meanwhile, the rest of society was busy eliminating wildlife through market
and illegal hunting and converting wildlife habitat into cities, farms,
roads, mines, polluted streams, pastures, clear-cuts and prairies where
forests once existed.
Except for market hunting, what the rest of society once did pretty much
continues today, while hunters have created organizations like the Rocky
Mountain Elk Foundation, the National Wild Turkey Federation, Ducks
Unlimited and Pheasants Forever to try and preserve habitat for one species
or another in the face of the rapidly increasing human population.
Each fall, the Game and Fish Department urges hunters not to display the
animals they killed in the backs of pickups or on top of cars or trailers,
for fear of offending a non-hunter.
Well, strip mines, oil fields, over-grazed pastures, sprawling subdivisions,
clear cuts that used to be habitat for white-tailed deer, forests that could
stand some cutting, wind farms, power lines, strip malls, over-fished
oceans, dried up and polluted streams, trash along the road, highway fences
impassible to big game, dried up and over-grazed rangelands and human
populations increasing at exponential rates offend me, but nobody seems to
be changing those things.
Ultimately, it won't be some guy with a dead deer in the back of his pickup
that eliminates hunting and most wildlife; it will be growth of the human
population.
The major problem for wildlife anywhere on the planet is humans. Those who
profess to love wildlife are all living where wildlife once lived.
Fish and wildlife don't live on pavement, under houses and malls, beneath
high-rise buildings or underneath mines and well pads.
If you drive or heat your house with electricity or natural gas, you
contribute to killing wildlife in the areas where development to produce
coal, oil, and natural gas is occurring.
Destroying habitat kills wildlife, whether it's temporary (if 50 years is
temporary) or not.
Animal lovers wearing synthetic clothes are contributors to destruction of
wildlife to produce the materials to make the clothes.
Ditto, clothing manufactured with the product of cotton fields, which aren't
exactly wildlife habitat.
Diverse habitats have consistently been turned into fields of corn, wheat,
cotton, soybeans, and other crops useful to man but which do not provide all
of the life requirements for wildlife, especially once the crop is harvested
and cattle are turned into the stubble, as often happens today. With today's
clean farming methods, farmlands are much less valuable to wildlife, and the
species that do well in farmlands bear little resemblance to species that
inhabited those areas before farming.
Over 75 percent of the world's population lives in cities these days, and
that proportion will only increase.
The population of the United States is projected to increase by another 100
million within 50 years.
Most of these people will have little exposure to wildlife and therefore
will probably not care about it.
The negative effects of the human population on wildlife are amply
illustrated in Europe, Asia, and Africa. With the exception of animals like
white-tailed deer, Canada geese, rats, mice, pigeons, house sparrows and
starlings, most of the species that inhabited North American metropolitan
areas before cities are gone.
There once were antelope all over Cheyenne, but they have been squeezed out
past the suburbs, which keep squeezing them even farther away.
So, before you get too excited over a dead deer in the back of a pickup, or
a kid who killed an elk, remember that more humans and bigger developments
are the real reasons why fish and wildlife ultimately disappear, and the
folks with the dead deer are contributing money to keep wildlife around.
That includes all wildlife, because license money also funds work done on
animals that aren't hunted.
In Wyoming, those who don't hunt contribute very little or nothing toward
preserving wildlife.
Those people staring back at you from the mirror are all part of the problem
for wildlife, because we continue to outbreed the rabbits and use up more of
their space.
Harry Harju, a wildlife biologist, hunter, and angler, has advised hunters
and outdoor writers on Wyoming hunting for 27 years. He can be reached by
mail care of Outdoors Editor, Wyoming Tribune-Eagle, 702 W. Lincolnway,
Cheyenne, WY, 82001, by email, hjharju@bresnan.net, or phone at 638-6874.
