My take on protecting the wild spaces

A recent Face Book post by a friend of mine and the ensuing discussion provoked me into an, at first unintentional, expression of my own view on conservation of whatever is left of our wilderness. I surprised myself about what my philosophy in this respect has crystalized into with my maturing life's experience and age.

My friend posted a photo of a wall in his cottage that he recently decorated with African animal heads with an assortment of curly horns - his family heritage. He is a wildlife biologist and is preparing to publish his book on conservation. He invited a discussion on trophy hunting, wolf control, etc. We both came from families with a long hunting tradition. He was born and spent his young years in Namibia, where his family had a farm on the edge of the savanna. Hunting used to be an integral part of his parent and grandparent generations' life. I grew up in central Europe and my grandfather used to be a top forestry advisor to a count. In his time he acquired a great fame as an expert hunting guide in the Carpatian Mountains. The walls of his forest ranger's residence were all decorated with great spreads of wild ungulate racks. I myself also used to love the thrill of hunting. As a boy, I prided myself in view of my peers when I shot and killed a partridge, a squirrel at a great distance and even a hare with an ordinary BB rifle. Even during the first years after I immigrated to Canada, I was able to impress my Canadian fellow graduate students from farming backgrounds when I joined them hunting ducks and grouse. I was a great shot thanks to a combination of my training that had comprised of my competing in Modern Pentathlon where, in addition to 4km of running, 300m swimming, epee fencing and equestrian jumping, I shot on turning silhouette targets from a pistol, as well as of my military service still in the old country. Yet I never graduated to a big game hunting. Seeing wild animals bloodied and dead minutes after they moved full of life in their splendid wild environment, sometimes even not feeling like cleaning them and preparing them for consumption, my zest for hunting gradually dissolved. From the time when I had to dispose of my shotgun when I was crossing into the U.S., moving to my first job at UCLA in mid-seventies, I have only hunted with a telephoto lens and find the old stalking thrill in it too. These are the comments that I expressed and surprised myself with. Yet I definitely stand behind them:

Jan Soukup

In my humble opinion, trophy hunting represents a dinosaur that in the modern times is overdue for extinction. For the sake of proving one's "masculinity", one acts on the urge to kill a perfectly healthy animal be it achieved by whatever technological means and/or facilitations by an outfitter, eroding the eons-established balance in the un-improvable upon order of nature. Trophy hunting does the exact opposite to what nature does, i.e., instead of eliminating the weak, substandard and sick animals, it skims off the most splendid, strongest and healthiest carriers of the genes of the species

Jan Soukup

Lu Carbyn thank you for providing a forum for analyzing this dilemma. As a matter of fact, I do not support the meat hunting, except, perhaps, for the traditional subsistence hunting by the Indigenous dwellers of the remote areas of the country, either. The average Joe from the city does not need it. There is plenty of meat on the supermarket shelves. It is the, at my age to me, incomprehensible psychology, surviving perhaps from Stone Age, yet totally controversial in modern time, that killing a wild animal is a proof of one’s virility, or manliness - a cure for a complex of inferiority. Some of these people are willing to use the latest state-of-the-art technology developed by the wild fauna-killing industry (visiting the Bass Pro shop in Balzac makes me sick to some degree - are we in war with wild animals? Are they going to roll over us?), or any other available means to kill an animal and have a picture taken over it, or carry home its parts to prove it.

With the population sprawling and the wild fauna reaching the states of being endangered, or extinct, the philosophy like father-son bonding over going hunting, for instance, are no longer sustainable. The paradox is, that these people may love nature and the outdoors, but do not know any other way of truly enjoying it than through the hunting tradition. The older I am, the more I value life. To prove my stalking savvy, I hunt close-up pictures of wildlife with a camera.

Jan Soukup

Lu Carbyn To your first response: I fully agree with you that the exponentially growing population of this planet, its habitat sprawling and its daily life activities are conflicting with and diminishing the realm of the spontaneous, balanced wild nature. You can not stop that. Yet, that's why it is that much more important not to add to it by killing for "sport", which could be stopped. It should be the first goal of the Wilderness Conservation to re-educate people in how they can enjoy the wild spaces without leaving a bloody footprint. Any claims about the "sustainable harvesting", etc. prove non-valid in a long run. Look at the history of the bison, the caribou, the salmon. Look at the history of the European fauna. They all irreversibly destroy the spontaneous balance of the wilderness that has been established by nature over billions of years. Any attempts to regulate it can only deteriorate it closer to the stage where our grandchildren will have to be creating artificial islands of "wilderness" stocked with cloned species. Yes, I have a wildlife camera, same as you. Yet, I collect most of my wildlife photos while traveling through wilderness by my own muscle power - on foot, on XC-skis, or by canoe. I call it tippy-toeing through God's temple of nature. My credo is never to leave any trace of my camping, or any disturbance to the wild environment. I am not a wildlife biologist to answer your second question other than I am being aware of a wolverine as the largest weasel, down through otter, marten, fisher, mink, ermine. I am happy with the knowledge that I glean from my own observations without knowing the Latin names. And with a PhD, I am trained to observe and conclude even scientifically.