I just read that Fish and Wildlife is proposing to protect predators FROM HUNTING as of February this year.....coyotes, wolves, bear, cougar, fox, bobcat. These animals are allowed to be trapped, gunned down from the air....gosh, no wonder there are so many deer and elk. So up until this year predators were allowed to be slaughtered to save deer and elk for the hunting slobs. Refuge my ass.....and this is just a proposal.....
Yes, I know what they say, I read it before, and they mean species like deer and god know what else, but there is no hunting allowed in national parks. and somehow the animals there do quite well on their own, except for the Yellowstone wolves who are hunted as soon as they set foot outside the park boundaries. What did animals ever do before humans came in to manage them. Populations of various species do explode from time to time and that's just nature at work. Deer do very well because most of their predators have been killed off. And if wildlife refuges allow even minimum hunting of predators, that's a problem.
Unfortunately, hunting is allowed in most, if not all, of the wildlife refuges in the US, which is ridiculous given the term "refuge", which I guess does not apply to the wildlife within....an oxymoron if you will.
The Fish and Wildlife Service which manages the refuges says that limited hunting of certain species is "necessary" to preserve the overall habitat and variety of species. I don't know whether that is correct, but here is what they say: https://www.fws.gov/story/why-hunting-allowed-refuges.
I for one approve of the aspirational idea that we need to set aside the late E. O. Wilson’s idea of setting aside half the Earth’s surface for maintaining biodiversity, if a bit tentatively. I think biodiversity should be treated as an economic asset to the point that poor farmers should be paid to preserve old-growth forests and other habitats, as it is in Costa Rica (see https://www.biofin.org/costa-rica). Perhaps the USDA’s Conservation Stewardship Program should be expanded toward this end.
Thanks for this interesting comment, Jarrod. I completely agree that biodiversity should be treated as an "economic asset" and the gov't should pay to improve it.
I chose not to mention the fact that our country displaced Native Americans to create our parks, because I didn't want to give that topic short-shrift, just a one-off line or two, because it is a major issue. Thanks for the links...I will read!
I just read that Fish and Wildlife is proposing to protect predators FROM HUNTING as of February this year.....coyotes, wolves, bear, cougar, fox, bobcat. These animals are allowed to be trapped, gunned down from the air....gosh, no wonder there are so many deer and elk. So up until this year predators were allowed to be slaughtered to save deer and elk for the hunting slobs. Refuge my ass.....and this is just a proposal.....
Yes, I know what they say, I read it before, and they mean species like deer and god know what else, but there is no hunting allowed in national parks. and somehow the animals there do quite well on their own, except for the Yellowstone wolves who are hunted as soon as they set foot outside the park boundaries. What did animals ever do before humans came in to manage them. Populations of various species do explode from time to time and that's just nature at work. Deer do very well because most of their predators have been killed off. And if wildlife refuges allow even minimum hunting of predators, that's a problem.
Unfortunately, hunting is allowed in most, if not all, of the wildlife refuges in the US, which is ridiculous given the term "refuge", which I guess does not apply to the wildlife within....an oxymoron if you will.
The Fish and Wildlife Service which manages the refuges says that limited hunting of certain species is "necessary" to preserve the overall habitat and variety of species. I don't know whether that is correct, but here is what they say: https://www.fws.gov/story/why-hunting-allowed-refuges.
I for one approve of the aspirational idea that we need to set aside the late E. O. Wilson’s idea of setting aside half the Earth’s surface for maintaining biodiversity, if a bit tentatively. I think biodiversity should be treated as an economic asset to the point that poor farmers should be paid to preserve old-growth forests and other habitats, as it is in Costa Rica (see https://www.biofin.org/costa-rica). Perhaps the USDA’s Conservation Stewardship Program should be expanded toward this end.
I was also reminded while reading this article that the natives of Yosemite were deeply knowledgeable about Californian forest ecology, more so than the NPS at first, even well after the NPS kicked them off of the land, as was the case in all these parks. (see https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/05/return-the-national-parks-to-the-tribes/618395/ and https://www.npca.org/case-studies/national-parks-are-native-lands) I think indigenous sovereignty should be as much of a goal for wildlife park governance as keeping access to them open for all.
Thanks for this interesting comment, Jarrod. I completely agree that biodiversity should be treated as an "economic asset" and the gov't should pay to improve it.
I chose not to mention the fact that our country displaced Native Americans to create our parks, because I didn't want to give that topic short-shrift, just a one-off line or two, because it is a major issue. Thanks for the links...I will read!