Destroying the Animals to Save Them?

Why Non-Hunters Need to Get Into Conservation Politics

Sportsmen for Fish & Wildlife bills itself as a “non-profit wildlife conservation organization of sportsmen members who are interested in preserving and increasing healthy populations of wildlife throughout the Western United States.” According to its website, group members may enjoy hunting elk, mule deer, moose, bighorn sheep, antelope, bison, turkey, and other birds and fish, and “are committed to making every necessary policy and political change to benefit wildlife and sportsmen alike.”

Mountain Lion Photo Credits: S. Michael Bisceglie

The group started out in Utah in 1993, founded by Don Peay, who has no formal ecological training, and calls himself a management and financial consultant, real estate developer and businessman.^[1] Peay’s group works with “elected officials at all levels from the community courthouse to the White House to improve and protect qu ality hunting and fishing on our great public lands and waters.”^[2] For instance, the group orchestrated an initiative in Utah requiring a two-thirds “supermajority” legislative vote before changes could be made to wildlife management regulations. Peay believed, apparently with support from Utah’s lawmakers, that this undemocratic rule was necessary to keep animal-rights groups from shutting down mountain lion hunting.

The group promotes three main objectives: to maximize herds and hunting opportunities; to change hunting regulations to favor trophy-sized animals; and to ensure aggressive predator control in order to increase the targeted herds. Not that killing carnivores makes sense in this equation: A recent study by the Colorado Division of Wildlife demonstrated mule deer fawn mort ality was greater from starvation than from predation by coyotes.^[3]

But Peay insists that to “think you can have a natural landscape with wolves and bears and other predators on it is romantic, but it’s not true,” and adds, “How can anybody say they are an animal-rights advocate, and say they want grizzly bears or coyotes or wolves that eat all the production of the young, tearing these calves away from the elk? Where’s the animal rights in that?”^[4] Not exactly an advocate for ecological science, Peay states: “There are a lot of biologists that are full of bullshit. They make up a lot of convenient lies to support their own agenda.”^[5]

Even among hunters, anglers, and state wildlife agency personnel, Peay is controversial. One contributor to an electronic chat site for Utah angers writes that Peay “carries an inordinate amount of power in Utah, and all two of his neurons are working overtime just to let him walk and talk at the same time.” The contributor describes an analysis done by Utah officials on the probable impact of the re-introduction of wolves which concludes that about 200 wolves would kill less than 1% of Utah’s deer and elk -- the same percentage killed each year on roads. Yet, the forum contributor continues, Peay said “Throw in a few wolf litters and in four years you're out of elk" and added" Utah's wildlife are doing very well today without wolves...We don't need them."^[6]

“Maybe,” continues the writer, “he should have suggested we all ride bicycles so we would not collide with his wildlife.”

Indeed, the writer’s comments do appear to have captured the group’s view. "The re ality is the wolves are competing with us," said Nate Helm, executive director of Idaho's chapter of Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife. "Hunters' visions are they can return to the same location year after year and have a positive experience with elk. Wolves threaten that."^[7]

Jerry Conley, former Director of Idaho Fish and Game, states: “Their solutions are to take all the money and kill the coyotes, the wolverines, the mountain lions. They haven’t had a positive thought in years. In the long run, I don’t think you can sustain a group just on negativity.”^[8]

Yet Peay’s group is growing throughout the west, with chapters also in New Mexico, Wyoming, Idaho, and Alaska.

Human Politics and Ecological Realities

Researchers have conducted studies in Yellowstone National Park showing the reintroduction of wolves has affected elk behavior more than it has affected elk populations. Wolves hunt near rivers, pressing elk to use higher habitat. Without wolves, elk would congregate in riparian areas and destroy aspen, willows, cottonwoods and riparian habitat in general. With elk being forced to use other areas, riparian habitat in Yellowstone has rebounded.^[9] Analogous studies between mule deer and mountain lions in Zion National Park in Utah found similar results. Human visitors have forced mountain lions out of their traditional hunting areas, allowing excessive mule deer to overuse riparian areas.^[10]

It’s not wolves or mountain lions who threaten most free-living animals, but loss of habitat. Lands that provide low-elevation winter range are being gobbled up by developers. Public lands such as those managed by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management remain the last refuge for animals in the West, but they are threatened by aggressive logging, grazing, coal mining, and oil and gas extraction. Notably, Sportsmen for Fish & Wildlife will rarely if ever oppose those activities; the group declines to take a position on current controversial issues such as expansive western oil and gas development or efforts to place limits on development inside national forest roadless areas -- arguably some of the best remaining habitat in the country. And although the group claims it’s raised million of dollars for habitat restoration, it’s done only insofar as it’s thought to improve hunting opportunities -- not the ecology as a whole.

Throughout western states the vast majority of wildlife agency budgets come from the licensing or hunters and anglers. Other sources of funding also promote the killing of animals, including various legislative initiatives such as the Dingell-Johnson Sport Fish Restoration Act, which authorizes the secretary of the Interior to provide financial assistance for state fish restoration and management plans and projects. In 1937, through the Pittman-Robertson Act, Congress authorized funds for states to restore animal populations and hunter education, provided the states prohibit the diversion of fees paid by hunters for any purpose other than the administration of State Game and Fish Departments; and the Wallop-Breaux Reauthorization (formerly known as the Aquatic Resources Trust Fund) captures federal fuel tax on motorboats and small engines, then dedicates some of the funds to ensure access to waters for anglers.^[11]

Even groups that purport to protect animals and the ecology have teamed up with hunting groups under the guise of fostering habitat restoration. “The non-game wildlife people don’t have an emotional or financial chip in this game,” says Amanda Smith of The Nature Conservancy in Utah, a partner of Sportsmen for Fish & Wildlife in habitat-protection projects. Adds Smith, “Don Peay has connected the dots between industry, outfitters and the sportsmen — including the very high-end sportsmen -- and he’s delivering that constituency to conservation, on the ground.”^[12]

According to a 2006 survey by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, over 71 million people spent nearly $45 billion observing, feeding and photographing animals outdoors in 2006. In contrast, 12.5 million hunters spent $22.7 billion in 2006. But although non-hunters outspend hunters, few revenue- generating mechanisms exist to protect animal populations and habitat for non-utilitarian purposes. Several legislative efforts, such as the Conservation and Reinvestment Act, the Land and Water Fund, and Teaming with Wildlife would earmark funds for various species and their habitat -- but some have provisions in them that promote ecological destruction (in the form of revenues from oil and gas royalties), and all of them accommodate hunters.

Some hunters claim to be the new predators. But human hunters don’t provide the same ecological benefits as other animals do. Arguably, with more natural predators and less human hunters, we wouldn’t need hunting fees to secure habitat. When nature is left to its own accord without human manipulation, the land and animals find a balance and flourish. But until the majority of people demand an end to predator control and require Congress to establish permanent revenue sources for animal and habitat protection, groups like Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife will continue to have a greater say in how animals and their habitats are treated. It is past time the non-hunters work with elected officials at all levels from the community courthouse to the White House to protect wildlife and their habitat for their own uses, not ours.

Footnotes