43
But history, in a sense, has already judged, by assessment of contemporary
mores, its popular sentiment regarding violence. It is fact that, according to numerous polls, less than 6% of Americans hunt.
1
The US Department of Interior has
represented that, “In 2016, more than 103 million Americans – a staggering 40
percent of the U.S. population 16 years and older – participated in some form of
fishing, hunting or other wildlife-associated recreation such as birdwatching or outdoor photography.”
2
But what it is failing to capture in that “staggering” percentage
is that the overwhelming majority of those Americans, and eco-tourists from abroad,
are visiting parks and refuges for aesthetic recreation, not in order to kill or feed
their family.
This discrepancy, and miscommunication of these inherent values, is paramount,
and track with nearly every great ecological ideal that has somehow, by incremental
changes, made it into law. But in the summer of 2020, the US Fish & Wildlife
Service put out a notice to the American public to volunteer any comments regarding the Service’s notion of opening up for hunting 96 National Wildlife Refuges,
eight of which had never previously witnessed any killing.
3
John Muir (1838–1914) once wrote, “Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot
run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed - chased and hunted down
as long a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent
bole backbones.”
4
Applying this same logic at the epicenter of America’s best and
brightest conservation ethical activism, Roosevelt, however tormented he may have
been personally, did not advocate for the slaughter of animals in our last remaining
protected areas (for which he had been one of the first to even think in those terms,
politically.)
Indeed, to fire upon migratory birds that had been utilizing those newly entrusted
refuges, ponds, and lakes for centuries, millennia, without fear of sudden disturbance, would be biologically insidious; counter to the most basic conservation ethic,
which Aldo Leopold laid down at the heart of his own great achievement, the Gila
Wilderness in New Mexico, the world’s first wilderness area, established June
3, 1924.
5
1 https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/hunting-demographics-charts-guns/Accessed
April 10, 2020.
2 U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and U.S. Department of
Commerce, U.S. Census Bureau. 2016 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and WildlifeAssociated Recreation.
3 As Pertaining to: Website: https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=FWS-HQ-NWRS-20200013-0001; Docket ID – FWS-HQ-NWRS-2020-0013.
4 Quoted from “The American Forests,” by John Muir, Atlantic Ideas Tour, August 1887, https://
www.theatlantic.com/ideastour/nature/muir-excerpt.html, Accessed May 17, 2020.
5 Not surprisingly, hunting is allowed in the Gila Wilderness. Numerous so called “game
management units” have been given over to the wildly enthusiastic protagonists of archery, rifle
and muzzleloader kills of “trophy” bull elk. Some outfitters even “guarantee” the size of the
antlers. See https://www.fs.usda.gov/activity/gila/recreation/hunting, Accessed July 24, 2020. The
Internet is rife with photos of proud, smiling people beside their trophies – elk crushed in death to
the ground, that previously stood up to five feet at the shoulders, and weighing as much as 1100
5.1 Contradictions of Environmental History
But history, in a sense, has already judged, by assessment of contemporary
mores, its popular sentiment regarding violence. It is fact that, according to numerous polls, less than 6% of Americans hunt.
1
The US Department of Interior has
represented that, “In 2016, more than 103 million Americans – a staggering 40
percent of the U.S. population 16 years and older – participated in some form of
fishing, hunting or other wildlife-associated recreation such as birdwatching or outdoor photography.”
2
But what it is failing to capture in that “staggering” percentage
is that the overwhelming majority of those Americans, and eco-tourists from abroad,
are visiting parks and refuges for aesthetic recreation, not in order to kill or feed
their family.
This discrepancy, and miscommunication of these inherent values, is paramount,
and track with nearly every great ecological ideal that has somehow, by incremental
changes, made it into law. But in the summer of 2020, the US Fish & Wildlife
Service put out a notice to the American public to volunteer any comments regarding the Service’s notion of opening up for hunting 96 National Wildlife Refuges,
eight of which had never previously witnessed any killing.
3
John Muir (1838–1914) once wrote, “Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot
run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed - chased and hunted down
as long a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent
bole backbones.”
4
Applying this same logic at the epicenter of America’s best and
brightest conservation ethical activism, Roosevelt, however tormented he may have
been personally, did not advocate for the slaughter of animals in our last remaining
protected areas (for which he had been one of the first to even think in those terms,
politically.)
Indeed, to fire upon migratory birds that had been utilizing those newly entrusted
refuges, ponds, and lakes for centuries, millennia, without fear of sudden disturbance, would be biologically insidious; counter to the most basic conservation ethic,
which Aldo Leopold laid down at the heart of his own great achievement, the Gila
Wilderness in New Mexico, the world’s first wilderness area, established June
3, 1924.
5
1 https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/hunting-demographics-charts-guns/Accessed
April 10, 2020.
2 U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and U.S. Department of
Commerce, U.S. Census Bureau. 2016 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and WildlifeAssociated Recreation.
3 As Pertaining to: Website: https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=FWS-HQ-NWRS-20200013-0001; Docket ID – FWS-HQ-NWRS-2020-0013.
4 Quoted from “The American Forests,” by John Muir, Atlantic Ideas Tour, August 1887, https://
www.theatlantic.com/ideastour/nature/muir-excerpt.html, Accessed May 17, 2020.
5 Not surprisingly, hunting is allowed in the Gila Wilderness. Numerous so called “game
management units” have been given over to the wildly enthusiastic protagonists of archery, rifle
and muzzleloader kills of “trophy” bull elk. Some outfitters even “guarantee” the size of the
antlers. See https://www.fs.usda.gov/activity/gila/recreation/hunting, Accessed July 24, 2020. The
Internet is rife with photos of proud, smiling people beside their trophies – elk crushed in death to
the ground, that previously stood up to five feet at the shoulders, and weighing as much as 1100
5.1 Contradictions of Environmental History