Is Hunting Good or Bad for Conservation?
The idea of hunting being vital in conservation sounds counter-intuitive. How can killing animals benefit the species? The truth of the matter is that in our current state, responsible hunting is an important tool in the conservation of the ecosystem as a whole. Let me explain how this act of killing wildlife helps protect the ecosystems, and how hunters could improve their impact on the environment even more.
What makes a responsible hunter?
Responsible hunters hunt to feed themselves, not to hang the head of a lion on their wall. Responsible hunters follow the restrictions set by the government and know their limits. They also follow a hunting ethical code, many not shooting an animal that is trapped or may be too far for a clean kill.
Population Control
In many places, especially across the United States and many parts of Europe, native predators have been extirpated and their land has been replaced with communities. Reintroduction of these animals in many of these areas would not be practical in these areas because of the threat they pose to humans. These animals need to be reintroduced to keep a good balance, but they can’t be reintroduced in areas with higher concentrations of people because that would lead to lots of human-wildlife conflict. In these areas, hunters fill in the niche that the predators had.
Population control through hunting becomes especially important when it comes to invasive species. Wherever humans go we bring our pets and livestock with us, and when those creatures escape they wreak havoc on the local environment. One of the most famous examples of this is the feral hogs. Feral hogs have been introduced to many places around the world, having a devastating impact on the environment by out-competing native herbivores, eating the eggs/chicks of ground-nesting birds, and uprooting plants. Hunters often target these hogs, which is extremely beneficial to control the population. Another example of population control of invasive species through hunting is the Burmese Python. These massive snakes, originally from South Asia, were introduced to South Florida through a mix of irresponsible snake keepers releasing their pets and snakes escaped from breeding facilities destroyed during a tropical storm. Ever since they have been eating native fauna and driving it to extinction. Their only natural predators are humans as alligators tend to avoid them (most of the time), so the hunters are the only ones able to control the population of invasive snakes from getting out of control.
Money
In the modern world, you can’t get much done without money. Unfortunately, a few donations from the public is not enough to fund a full conservation project. Hunters must pay a fee for their hunting license, this payment is where a majority of the money for conservation comes from. Without this money, a lot of the conservation work could not be accomplished due to lack of funds. Hunters pay large sums of money to hunt certain animals, for example, a hunter in Alaska has to pay 400 dollars to harvest a moose (800 for a non-resident) which can feed his family for weeks. Most of that money goes back to conserving the local ecosystem and protecting the general population of moose.
Motivation to Conserve
Most people now are only motivated to conserve something that directly benefits them. When the populations of species start dropping it is generally hunters who rally along with conservationists to help raise the population and protect the species future. Are they protecting it so that future generations can hunt them? Yes, but it works. Hunters work hard to conserve wildlife habitats so that they have land that can support the animals they wish to hunt.
Sustainability
Responsible hunting, foraging, and fishing for food are some of the most environmentally sustainable ways to get food. Food crops take up large amounts of land and water, domestic animals raised for food can take up even more (a large majority of this is beef cows). Responsible hunting is much more humane than factory farming and it has a very little negative impact on the environment, and many times has a positive impact on the environment by controlling populations of other species. Killing invasive species such as feral hogs can be incredibly helpful, with hunters serving as natural predators.
How Can Hunters Do More to Help Protect the Environment?
Hunters, while serving as population control, are not perfect replacements for predators. One thing hunters could do is move away from the ideology of trying to kill the biggest buck or the buck with the most points on his antlers. Instead, try to kill the slowest or the weaker ones. It leads to an easier kill, and you can drive natural selection to continue. If you focus on shooting all of the ten-point bucks, there will be less ten-point bucks in the future to pass on those good antler genes. Simply just try to shoot the slowest animal or whichever deer comes closest, hunters must lose this trophy hunting mindset. Also, don’t drive into large areas of land far from society to hunt, unless there is evidence of a lack of predators. If there are natural predators you will likely see less deer and your hunting skills could be needed closer to civilization to hunt overpopulations of deer or coyotes over there. Also, try to focus as much as possible on killing invasive species, you can hunt native species that are overpopulation but especially focus on non-native species.
In a perfect world, hunting would not be a necessary tool in conservation, but this is not a perfect world. People need a reason to want to conserve wildlife and wild habitats. You need money to protect natural ecosystems. You need a way to remove invasive species and control overpopulation. Hunting, when done responsibly, has proven to be an effective method to solve all of these problems and at the current time, it is the most efficient. Hunting methods should be improved and restrictions should be tightened, but no system is perfect and this is the best one we have right now.