Most people who are aware of the term market hunting will generally connect it to the early days of America when hunting was completely unregulated and took place on unowned land especially in the American west. Back in those days settlers moving west largely wiped out most large game animals mainly for food as well as to sell on the open markets back east. The tragedy of near extinction of game animals like the bison led to strict game laws and banning the sale of wild game meat. I agree that for this time period these laws were probably a good idea that were helpful in protecting the vanishing herds of wildlife across the continent. However, I believe that for modern times i think legalizing the sale of wild game meat could actually help wildlife populations to thrive even more and potentially lead to a massive voluntary restoration of vital wildlife habitat. I realize that this will be a very controversial idea to both hunters and non-hunters, but I ask that you hear me out and just contemplate what I am about to say.
To me it is all about the incentives. Most of America is made up of private lands, especially the most productive areas that could support high amounts and diversity of wildlife. These lands are used for many different reasons. People manage some to grow forests for wood products while other land is turned to urban lots and housing developments. The single largest private land use in America, however, is agriculture.
Vast fields of corn, beans and wheat take up huge portions of America. Then there are also the pastures, cattle ranches and rangeland that seem to stretch on forever in areas that are not suitable for crop production. All these areas combined make up the vast majority of the private land in America. These lands do still contain some wildlife, but these are only very hardy species that are adapted to the constant disturbances of the agricultural system. Species like whitetailed deer and raccoons do ok here, but this is despite the way the land is being managed, not because of it. These lands have the potential to be way more productive and support not only more wildlife numbers, but also a much higher diversity as well. But as it stands now most landowners, have no incentive to provide wildlife habitat.
The majority of landowners today make their money from selling the food that is grown on these properties and many would probably go broke if they tried to manage it just for wildlife. There are some people who make money by selling hunts for deer and other game, but there are only so many hunters willing to purchase this type of opportunity. Most people would rather buy the food products grown on these lands so that is what most land owners focus on. However, I believe that if private landowners were allowed to sell harvested wild game then that would give them a huge incentive to turn their property into some amazing wildlife habitat. I believe most people, if given the option, would eat wild game more if it was as available as domestic meat sources are today. If one could go to a grocery store and grab a big, free-ranging elk steak off the shelf the same way they can do for beef, I think that would be an intriguing option. I think wild game meat could potentially be a very popular option for a lot of people. Wild game meat would be able to check off a lot of markers that people care about. It can be local, organic, free range, fed a natural diet, hormone free and encourage the restoration of wildlife habitat across the country. The fact is that wild game is a very healthy food and one could argue that this is exactly what humans are designed to eat.
Now some people might be concerned about an idea like this because they might believe it would lead to the decimation of wild game like what has happened in the past. However, if you think about the circumstances around wild game hunting today vs early in this country's history then you will notice some important differences. For example, back in the day hunting was completely unregulated and took place mostly on unowned lands. What this lead to was a common economic effect called "tragedy of the commons". This effect happens when a shared resource is depleted because people have little to no incentive to preserve it. In fact, the incentives are to deplete the resource as quickly as possible because if you don't use it then somebody else will. Today this is prevented from happening on public lands by strict regulations that only allow a predetermined amount of game to be harvested through the distribution of game tags. However on private lands, especially larger tracts, one could theoretically manage and control game populations the way they see fit because of property rights, allowing for the preservation of a renewable resource that can be harvested sustainably without having to worry If someone else will deplete it.
Another reason why market hunting would work much better in modern times is because much of the population has a value of wildlife conservation. Long gone are the days of the pioneer whose main value was to conquer nature instead of preserving it. Today most people would agree that more wildlife would be good for society and good for the earth so these ideas could be sustainable. People today could encourage private landowners to manage their property for wildlife by buying wild game products and thus create additional acres of needed wildlife habitat, which could lead to more intact and productive ecosystems across the country. The incentives would all be in place. I would probably advocate for the ending of prohibition of market hunting only on private lands as I do believe the incentives wouldn't line up as well on most of the public land in the country. But either way that would open up much of the country to market hunting and could provide a new sustainable food source that could alter land use practices to benefit all wildlife. I believe if we really want to help increase wild game and nongame wildlife populations then people who are non-hunters need to see a direct benefit from intact ecosystems, otherwise hunters will have to carry the burden of conservation largely on their own as they have for the past 100 years or so.
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