Is Hunting Conservation?
The Take home Message
- "Hunting is conservation" is an increasingly common refrain among hunters and hunter-interest groups.
- It is important to distinguish between statements like "hunters play a role in conservation" (they do) and "hunting is conservation" (it is not).
- I view the "hunting is conservation" argument as a public relations ploy more than a description of the work we do in the conservation community.
- It is important to separate the act of hunting from the actor. Some hunters are certainly conservationists, even if hunting itself isn't conservation.
The full story
Hunters, hunter-interest groups, and some management agencies are quick to point out the roles hunters play in conservation and management of natural resources in the United States. While hunters are important to conservation, it seems that over time the distinction between “hunters play a role in conservation” and “hunting is conservation” has been lost. Most of the major hunting-interest groups take advantage of this ambiguity to promote their interests and justify sport hunting to a skeptical public. For example, The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation website prominently claims that "hunting is conservation". You can find something along these lines in the literature of many hunter-interest groups, and sometimes in the literature of groups that have little to do with hunting.
Hunting is Conservation. Here's Why. | NDA https://t.co/Uh4YDWUdFu pic.twitter.com/oAWPeAKIQs
— National Deer Association (@deerassociation) February 13, 2021
Even management agencies occasionally seem to blur the distinction. The former Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt perfectly demonstrated this when he said: “We continue to take significant actions to further conservation initiatives and support sportsmen and women who are America’s true conservationists”. The idea has become paradigm in some circles and has made its way into the ethos of hunters themselves, most of whom consider themselves to be conservationists. From the perspective portrayed by the hunting community, it would seem that being a modern hunter requires a strong conservation ethic.
The argument is pervasive, but is hunting conservation? Are hunters conservationists? On much of this site, I focus on whether sport hunting serves a conservation purpose, either directly through population control or indirectly through funding for conservation and management agencies. Both of those are true when placed in context, but in my opinion are insufficient to justify the claim that hunting is conservation. Some actions by hunters are useful to conservation. That alone does not make hunting conservation or the hunter a conservationist.
First, I think many hunters misunderstand the relationship between hunting and conservation. It is not a direct link. The actual act of harvesting an animal, pulling the trigger or releasing an arrow, does not directly have a conservation benefit to the species being hunted. Harvesting an animal has never brought that species back from the brink of extinction. Limiting harvest has. About the only case that I could even imagine to directly tie the act of harvesting an animal to conservation of that species would be this: unregulated populations can become too large, causing crowding and increasing the risk of disease. Certain diseases can wipe out populations, so lowering the density of the population might be valuable for conservation. While ecologically feasible, it is a far-fetched example. Density-dependent mechanisms do a pretty good job of regulating such diseases without the need for human intervention. From both my perspective as an ecologist and as a hunter, I simply don’t think one can effectively argue that hunting serves a direct conservation purpose.
Thus, any claim that hunting is conservation must rely on indirect benefits, with the act of harvesting an animal one or more degrees away from protecting biodiversity or benefitting ecosystem functioning. One degree of separation would be the benefits to other species in the ecosystem. This could happen by keeping the hunted species in check, allowing other species to thrive. Hunters regulate white-tailed deer populations, which lessens the pressure on native plants, for example. However, there aren’t many game species for which this is a concern and even among those few species, population regulation is generally necessary because humans, including hunters, have driven the ecosystem out of balance by persecuting large carnivores.
How then do we weigh the value of this act in terms of conservation? For species that are far below carrying capacity, the answer is relatively straightforward: hunting likely serves little or no purpose in maintaining diversity of other species in the environment. Hunting the few game species consistently above carrying capacity is more complicated and will be dependent on the life history of the species, the environment, and other population regulating mechanisms. At best, this justification for hunting as conservation is valid in only a limited number of specific cases and cannot be used as blanket justification for hunting as conservation.
Two degrees of separation would be the benefits hunting provides for conservation through funding of conservation programs implemented by fish and wildlife agencies. This is probably the most common argument for hunting as conservation. It is also where it's most important to distinguish between conservation-positive benefits of participating in hunting and the claims of hunting as conservation. I think of it like this: if sport and trophy hunting disappeared tomorrow, it would probably be a net-positive for biodiversity and ecosystem functioning around the world. Conversely, if hunters' dollars disappeared tomorrow, it would probably be a net-negative for conservation. This might seem like semantics, but it's not. It means the conservation community needs hunters' money to do their work far more than they need people actually harvesting animals. Hunters' dollars are the thing the conservation community would attempt to replace if hunting were ever to become illegal, not the hunters.
There are further, even more indirect justifications for hunting as conservation. Sport hunting might drive hunters to exhibit pro-environment behaviors unrelated to hunting. Sociologists have been interested in how humans interact with nature for decades, but little consensus has been reached about whether hunting is a gateway to other eco-friendly behaviors. Participation in hunting is related to an increased knowledge of biodiversity among young children, but the effect becomes less clear in adults. In general, most outdoor recreation, whether consumptive or non-consumptive, increases appreciation of nature and tends to lead to adoption of at least some pro-environment behaviors. Some sociologists have found the type of recreation matters, while others have found that it does not. My general impression of this literature is that hunters do tend to be more environmentally inclined than citizens who participate in no outdoor recreation. It is unclear if hunters are more environmentally inclined than citizens who participate in outdoor activities like birding or wildlife photography.
I've probably made it clear enough at this point that I don't buy the argument that hunting is conservation, either from my perspective as a hunter or my perspective as a practicing ecologist. To me, this part of the story is little more than a public relations pitch disconnected from the reality of what we actually do in the conservation community. That said, I am careful to separate the act from the actor. The fact that hunting isn't conservation does not exclude the possibility that a hunter can be a conservationist. That is a much more nuanced argument, revolving around the gradient of conservation ethics found across individual hunters. I'll explain what I mean here.
The argument is pervasive, but is hunting conservation? Are hunters conservationists? On much of this site, I focus on whether sport hunting serves a conservation purpose, either directly through population control or indirectly through funding for conservation and management agencies. Both of those are true when placed in context, but in my opinion are insufficient to justify the claim that hunting is conservation. Some actions by hunters are useful to conservation. That alone does not make hunting conservation or the hunter a conservationist.
First, I think many hunters misunderstand the relationship between hunting and conservation. It is not a direct link. The actual act of harvesting an animal, pulling the trigger or releasing an arrow, does not directly have a conservation benefit to the species being hunted. Harvesting an animal has never brought that species back from the brink of extinction. Limiting harvest has. About the only case that I could even imagine to directly tie the act of harvesting an animal to conservation of that species would be this: unregulated populations can become too large, causing crowding and increasing the risk of disease. Certain diseases can wipe out populations, so lowering the density of the population might be valuable for conservation. While ecologically feasible, it is a far-fetched example. Density-dependent mechanisms do a pretty good job of regulating such diseases without the need for human intervention. From both my perspective as an ecologist and as a hunter, I simply don’t think one can effectively argue that hunting serves a direct conservation purpose.
Thus, any claim that hunting is conservation must rely on indirect benefits, with the act of harvesting an animal one or more degrees away from protecting biodiversity or benefitting ecosystem functioning. One degree of separation would be the benefits to other species in the ecosystem. This could happen by keeping the hunted species in check, allowing other species to thrive. Hunters regulate white-tailed deer populations, which lessens the pressure on native plants, for example. However, there aren’t many game species for which this is a concern and even among those few species, population regulation is generally necessary because humans, including hunters, have driven the ecosystem out of balance by persecuting large carnivores.
How then do we weigh the value of this act in terms of conservation? For species that are far below carrying capacity, the answer is relatively straightforward: hunting likely serves little or no purpose in maintaining diversity of other species in the environment. Hunting the few game species consistently above carrying capacity is more complicated and will be dependent on the life history of the species, the environment, and other population regulating mechanisms. At best, this justification for hunting as conservation is valid in only a limited number of specific cases and cannot be used as blanket justification for hunting as conservation.
Two degrees of separation would be the benefits hunting provides for conservation through funding of conservation programs implemented by fish and wildlife agencies. This is probably the most common argument for hunting as conservation. It is also where it's most important to distinguish between conservation-positive benefits of participating in hunting and the claims of hunting as conservation. I think of it like this: if sport and trophy hunting disappeared tomorrow, it would probably be a net-positive for biodiversity and ecosystem functioning around the world. Conversely, if hunters' dollars disappeared tomorrow, it would probably be a net-negative for conservation. This might seem like semantics, but it's not. It means the conservation community needs hunters' money to do their work far more than they need people actually harvesting animals. Hunters' dollars are the thing the conservation community would attempt to replace if hunting were ever to become illegal, not the hunters.
There are further, even more indirect justifications for hunting as conservation. Sport hunting might drive hunters to exhibit pro-environment behaviors unrelated to hunting. Sociologists have been interested in how humans interact with nature for decades, but little consensus has been reached about whether hunting is a gateway to other eco-friendly behaviors. Participation in hunting is related to an increased knowledge of biodiversity among young children, but the effect becomes less clear in adults. In general, most outdoor recreation, whether consumptive or non-consumptive, increases appreciation of nature and tends to lead to adoption of at least some pro-environment behaviors. Some sociologists have found the type of recreation matters, while others have found that it does not. My general impression of this literature is that hunters do tend to be more environmentally inclined than citizens who participate in no outdoor recreation. It is unclear if hunters are more environmentally inclined than citizens who participate in outdoor activities like birding or wildlife photography.
I've probably made it clear enough at this point that I don't buy the argument that hunting is conservation, either from my perspective as a hunter or my perspective as a practicing ecologist. To me, this part of the story is little more than a public relations pitch disconnected from the reality of what we actually do in the conservation community. That said, I am careful to separate the act from the actor. The fact that hunting isn't conservation does not exclude the possibility that a hunter can be a conservationist. That is a much more nuanced argument, revolving around the gradient of conservation ethics found across individual hunters. I'll explain what I mean here.