The Environmentalist Hunter?

A few weeks ago, our Rhetoric class read some speeches and letters of Teddy Roosevelt. In these pieces, Roosevelt expresses his reverence for nature and his love of birds. His presence alone in the anthology American Earth reveals his conservationism. It is also widely known that Roosevelt was an avid hunter. Throughout his lifetime, he hunted and killed numerous bears, geese, rabbits, deer, ducks, buffaloes, skunks, beavers, cougars, and even African animals, such as lions, rhinoceroses, Cape buffaloes, and elephants. This puzzles me...how can one kill what he or she loves? I hear it all the time. "I love animals!," as he or she scarfs down a chicken sandwich.

But what really are the environmental effects of hunting? I can personally find hunting sadistic and unsportsmanlike, but do I have the responsibility to oppose it as an environmentalist? 

Heheheeee...

Okay, I'm done...let's move on.

The most common argument that I hear from people who support hunting is that it helps to prevent animal overpopulation (I usually hear about deer, an animal that is, perhaps, overpopulating southeastern Pennsylvania). And wouldn't it be better to just shoot them than let them die of starvation? I take two issues with this argument; firstly, the only reason the deer are 'overpopulated' and there's not enough for them to eat is because we use all their land for roads, farms, buildings and shopping centers. What do we expect to happen? We laugh at them and think them stupid for running out into the streets that we put in the middle of their homes. That would be like a track being built through your kitchen with a train that comes through every sixty seconds. And then when you are inevitably flattened by said train, the last words you will hear are "Hahahahaha! Stupid!" Is that fair? Secondly, this argument shows a grave double standard. Children in Africa starve to death every day, but no one suggests shooting them to put them out of their misery. For an even more relevant analogy, dogs and cats suffer from overpopulation as much as deer, and strays starve to death every day, but no one is hunting them. The most we do is spay and neuter our pets (efforts to spay and neuter deer, anyone?). So, even though controlling populations may make sense from an environmental standpoint, it's not really a fair argument.

Even if you take animal rights out of the equation, the facts show that deer hunting is not at all the most effective way to control populations. In fact, it can do the opposite. Typically, more bucks are killed than does, as doe hunting is limited by law. In most areas there are currently eight does to one buck. Since deer are not monogamous, one buck may impregnate many does, and this fact, in combination with the disproportion between males and females, leads to a huge increase in population. And even though hunting can help control populations, this is only immediately after a hunt. The amount of time when there is more food for all the deer is minuscule. A tactic that would really make sense would be to introduce natural predators like wolves into the deer's environments, but that would probably be too 'uncivilized' for most people. However, if we did that and just left the deer alone, their population would be controlled naturally.

What about other animals? Well, we have all heard the stories of species being hunted to extinction or almost to extinction. Of course, the tragedies of these extinctions cannot be denied. Many of the more recently extinct animals (recently being in the last 100-200 years) were killed out greed for fur, hides and skins (the Toolache wallaby and the Quagga), were predators killed mainly by farmers because of perceived threats to their sheep flocks (the Tasmanian tiger and the Falkland Island wolf), because of ridiculous superstitions (the Zanzibar leopard) or, most sickeningly, just for fun (the Passenger pigeon and the Atlas bear). These are the more well-known examples of extinct animals, but few people are aware that 2.7 to 270 species go extinct every day. It is believed that half of the species in the world will be extinct by 2100, and, according to a poll by the American Museum of Natural History, seventy percent of biologists believe that this mass extinction will be catastrophic to human life. The natural world is an intricate web of millions of species of plants, animals and microorganisms that are all connected in some way. When this natural order is disturbed to too great of an extent, the chain of organisms falls apart and humans cannot survive, just as a spider cannot survive if a stick is swung through her web. 

Obviously hunting of any animal is not the most significant cause of this eventual mass extinction, but why contribute? Leaving on a light in an empty room, driving a Hummer, or running the water while you brush your teeth aren't the main contributors to global warming, but that doesn't mean you should do them. Punching someone in the face isn't murder, but that doesn't mean you should do it. As with almost all other issues society faces, passivity is the culprit. Hunting without thinking about the implications is irresponsible, as is ignorantly driving an SUV or leaving an unused light on. And that thought process that most people (even you might) have--that "Oh, well it's just one lightbulb, what harm can it do?" mindset--is partially what got us in this environmental hole we're now in. How about a little personal responsibility? The American excuses of fun or convenience are getting old.