| People who harvest wildlife and fish -- i.e., hunters, trappers and anglers -- often claim priority use of wildlife because they pay for its management. However, contrary to what they like to believe, hunters, trappers and anglers aren't buying ownership of wildlife. Rather, they are paying for government agencies to limit the impacts of harvest on wildlife populations. Where there is no hunting, there is little need for conventional wildlife management. True, non-harvesters do benefit from some facets of conventional wildlife management, such as control of marauding wildlife. But that is often scant compensation to non-hunters for all the ways that hunters interfere with non-consumptive uses of wildlife and the danger that hunting poses for "bystanders." Animals are the only "things" hit by hunter bullets. People have been wounded, even killed. |
| WHEN DO HUNTERS BECOME HOGS? -- GAME HOGS? When They Act As If They “Own” the Wildlife? |
Alaska’s Board of Game (BoG) claims that aerial shooting is essential for restoring predator-prey balances. Opponents are allegedly ignorant of the underlying science and legislation. Firing back, those opponents characterize BoG’s $400,000 “educational” efforts as unadulterated propaganda to maximize hunter harvest, no matter what the cost to other users or how offensive its methods are to the public. In BoG’s view, consumptive users are like horses allowed to eat oats from a trough; everyone else should be happy with any oats that pass through a horse’s gut and end up in its dung. That kind of contempt for large segments of the public is bad enough from private organizations. It is utterly inappropriate from a government board. Pardon us for believing that Alaska’s wildlife belongs to all of us, and that when management plans are devised, all user groups should be on a more-or-less equal footing. Every effort should be made to share resources to meet the needs of as many people as possible, rather than helping any special interest group to hog most of the “game.” No matter how much you or we enjoy eating moose or caribou, we cannot pay bills with it. But Alaskans in a wide range of jobs (gas stations, restaurants, grocery stores, sporting goods stores, air and water taxi services, guides, etc. ) do pay bills with ecotourism dollars, the state’s second largest industry. It’s long past time that designated seats on BoG and local Advisory Committees were balanced across the whole spectrum of user groups. |
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