What do we really impact on a day to day basis? And what is acceptable vs. unacceptable? Each day we use cars that pollute. We consume products that come at the expense of others well being (tshirts, shoes, etc). The meat and animal bi-products we consume often are provided at the expense of an animals treated inhumanely either because of steroid, and other drug injections, or are raised in an inhospitable environment. Even vegetarians and vegans consume products that require land to grow. Land that may have been taken away from wildlife.
I’m not listing out things to point a finger at anyone, or to say that it is wrong to do what we do. The reason I bring this up is with regards to our impact on the wildlife that sourounds us. A common argument for pro-hunting advocates is that there is a deer popluation that needs to be managed. And the way we manage it is by harvesting x number of animals each year.
I’ll be the first to admit that this ‘argument’ is overused, but it doesn’t mean that it isn’t valid. Ignoring this potential problem wouldn’t make things better for us or the wildlife. So why do we have an overpopulation? After all, at some point we weren’t here to control the population. That’s true… we weren’t here, and so because of that the deer herd was stable. The reason it was stable was that there were natural preditors of deer before humans popluated the area. Deer preditors like coyotes, foxes, cougars, and wolves have been replaced by humans. A typical carnivore requires a huge amount of land compared to it’s prey. The dispersment of people, and it’s intolarance of these preditors have all but eliminated these animals in much of the state. The prey however, require very little land to survive comparitively. So when the natural preditors are eliminated, the prey overpopulate causing new issues of starvation, and other survival resources that happen to be in short(er) supply.
Without man as a preditor populations would grow out of control. A new ‘limit’ would be reached where the herd size stablizes, but this is at the cost of massive starvation each year. Nature WILL find a way balance itself whether or not we are a large or small part of the process.
A good example of how wildlife lives without the inhabitation of man is on the island of Isle Royale in northern Lake Superior. This island… isolated from the mainland holds numerous Moose, and a number of wolves. The population of both has remained constant due to the delicate balance created by the preditor vs. prey. The moose are held in check by the wolves, and the population of the wolves is directly affected by the number of moose available to eat. So what if the wolves were removed? That balance would be upset.
Hunting isn’t the only option, but is by far the most practical. Since the other option is packing our bags and moving from the area, and restoring the original preditors to the area. I would just like to make the point, that while hunting isn’t required, it does ultimately restore more balance to wildlife of our country.