Summary
North America abounds in wildlife — but why?
At the turn of the last century, many observers believed that species that we take for granted today would disappear forever. In this episode, we share a story about the way that wildlife conservation came to be practiced, the lives that it privileged, and the lives that it left out.
But despite any controversy, one aspect of the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation (or "the NAM" for our purposes) is indisputable: its principles explain the landscape of laws and institutions in which North Americans enjoy nature today.
Correction: Adam mistakenly notes Valerius Geist as the author of “A Beast the Color of Winter” (in fact by Douglas H. Chadwick). This reference should have been to Dr. Geist’s own book on mountain goats: “Living on the Edge”. Thanks to Jesse B. for noticing this error!
Show Notes
This episode features the voices of Shane Mahoney and Mark Elbroch.
And was produced by Adam Huggins and Mendel Skulski.
Correction: It was mentioned that no funds are available for non-lethal carnivore deterrents, however after publication we were notified that at least one granting program exists (for Benton County, Oregon).
Music by Thumbug, Museum of No Art, and Sunfish Moon Light.
Special thanks to Mark Elbroch, Julian Fisher, and Amanda Hull
✨ And as always, this episode was made possible with the support of our amazing patrons. 🌱
Puma concolor © Mark Elbroch / Panthera
Citations
Darimont, C. T., Hall, H., Eckert, L., Mihalik, I., Artelle, K., Treves, A., & Paquet, P. C. (2021). Large carnivore hunting and the Social License to Hunt. Conservation Biology, 35 (4), 1111–1119.
Denevan, W. M. (1992). The pristine myth: The landscape of the Americas in 1492. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 82 (3), 369–385.
Denevan, W. M. (2016). After 1492: Nature rebounds. Geographical Review, 106 (3), 381–398.
Eichler, L., & Baumeister, D. (2018). Hunting for Justice. Environment and Society, 9, 75–90.
Eichler, L., & Baumeister, D. (2021). Settler colonialism and the US conservation movement: Contesting Histories, indigenizing futures. Ethics, Policy & Environment, 24 (3), 209–234.
Elbroch, L. M., & Quigley, H. (2016). Social Interactions in a solitary carnivore. Current Zoology.
Elbroch, L. M. (2020). The cougar conundrum: Sharing the world with a successful predator. Island Press.
Elbroch, L. M., & Kusler, A. (2018). Are Pumas subordinate carnivores, and does it matter? PeerJ, 6.
Geist, V. (1988). How markets in wildlife meat and parts, and the sale of hunting privileges, jeopardize wildlife conservation. Conservation Biology, 2 (1), 15–26.
Geist, V., & Organ, J. F. (2004). The Public Trust Foundation of the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. Northeast Wildlife, 58, 49–56.
Geist, V., Mahoney, S. P., & Organ, J. F. (2001). Why hunting has defined the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. Transactions of the 66th North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference, 175–185.
Koch, A., Brierley, C., Maslin, M. M., & Lewis, S. L. (2019). Earth system impacts of the European arrival and great dying in the Americas after 1492. Quaternary Science Reviews, 207, 13–36.
Mahoney, S. P., & Geist, V. (2019). The North American model of wildlife conservation. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Organ, J.F., V. Geist, S.P. Mahoney, S. Williams, P.R. Krausman, G.R. Batcheller, T.A. Decker, R. Carmichael, P. Nanjappa, R. Regan, R.A. Medellin, R. Cantu, R.E. McCabe, S. Craven, G.M. Vecellio, and D.J. Decker. (2012). The North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. The Wildlife Society Technical Review 12-04. The Wildlife Society, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.
Parker, I. D., Feldpausch-Parker, A. M., & Vidon, E. S. (2017). Privileging consumptive use: A Critique of ideology, power, and discourse in the North American model of wildlife conservation. Conservation and Society, 15 (1), 33–40.
This episode includes audio recorded by Benboncan, Justin.Mckinsey, jayfrosting, sjturia, DesignDean, 16GPanskaZlochova_Eliska, handygaber, sad3d, BullSam, and Nivatius, accessed through the Freesound Project, and protected by Creative Commons attribution licenses.
You can subscribe to and download Future Ecologies wherever you find podcasts - please share, rate, and review us. We’re also on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and iNaturalist.
If you like what we do, and you want to help keep it ad-free, please consider supporting us on Patreon. Pay-what-you-can (as little as $1/month) to get access to bonus monthly mini-episodes, stickers, patches, a community Discord chat server, and more.
Future Ecologies is recorded and produced on the unceded, shared, and asserted territories of the WSÁNEĆ, Penelakut, Hwlitsum, and Lelum Sar Augh Ta Naogh, and other Hul'qumi'num speaking peoples, otherwise known as Galiano Island, British columbia, as well as the unceded, shared, and asserted territories of the Musqueam (xwməθkwəy̓əm) Squamish (Skwxwú7mesh), and Tsleil-Waututh (Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh) Nations - otherwise known as Vancouver, British Columbia.
Transcription
Introduction Voiceover 00:02
You are listening to season four of Future Ecologies.
Adam Huggins 00:07
I guess we'll just start here. Mendel, have you ever hunted something wild for your own sustenance?
Mendel Skulski 00:16
Do mushrooms count?
Adam Huggins 00:17
[Laughs]
Mendel Skulski 00:19
They're easy to sneak up on.
Adam Huggins 00:21
It's very true. In this case, mushrooms don't count. I'm talking about wild animals.
Mendel Skulski 00:27
I have never hunted a wild animal. At least not a mammal. I fished a couple times. But no, I haven't hunted land animals in that typical sense. I've never shot a gun at a living thing,
Adam Huggins 00:39
Right yeah.
Mendel Skulski 00:41
Why do you ask?
Adam Huggins 00:42
I ask because you're a person who enjoys the outdoors.
Mendel Skulski 00:45
Mhm
Adam Huggins 00:46
Harvests some wild food.
Mendel Skulski 00:47
Sure, yeah.
Adam Huggins 00:48
But you've never picked up a firearm. And I think many people are like that. Until very recently, that was me too. And now I've taken up the crossbow. And I would say that I hunt, but I feel like to earn that distinction you have to have been successful at it at least once.
Mendel Skulski 01:09
You're an aspiring hunter.
Adam Huggins 01:11
I'm an aspiring hunter. I walk around with the crossbow in the fall. So we've established that... you are not a hunter.
Mendel Skulski 01:19
Nope.
Adam Huggins 01:19
So how about this: Have you ever heard of the Boone and Crockett club?
Mendel Skulski 01:24
No.
Adam Huggins 01:25
Okay. What about the Lacey Act?
Mendel Skulski 01:27
No. Should I have?
Adam Huggins 01:29
The Pittman Robertson act?
Mendel Skulski 01:30
No.
Adam Huggins 01:31
How about those that duck stamps that you can buy that support conservation in the US?
Mendel Skulski 01:36
That's a thing?
Adam Huggins 01:36
That's a thing.
Mendel Skulski 01:38
I've never seen those. I'm in Canada. I would buy them if I could.
Adam Huggins 01:41
So then would it be fair to guess that you haven't heard of the North American model of wildlife conservation?
Mendel Skulski 01:48
Not at all... the- the North American model of wildlife conservation,
Adam Huggins 01:52
The North American model of wildlife conservation.
Mendel Skulski 01:55
That's a mouthful. Are we gonna say that a lot?
Adam Huggins 01:58
Should we call it the NAM for short? Okay. You haven't heard of the NAM?
Mendel Skulski 02:00
No.
Adam Huggins 02:02
Well, apparently, the NAM is all the rage in hunting and wildlife management circles right now. And you're in luck, because I've had a long conversation with one of its key proponents.
Shane Mahoney 02:12
Sure. My name is Shane Mahoney.
Adam Huggins 02:15
Shane literally co-wrote the book on the NAM.
Shane Mahoney 02:17
and the CEO and president of Conservation Visions, based in St. John's, Newfoundland, the former head of wildlife research for the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, founder of the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Science at Memorial University, And the head of sustainable development and science for the government of Newfoundland and Labrador before forming my own enterprise.
Adam Huggins 02:40
It practically goes without saying that Shane, like everybody that I've interviewed for this episode, loves wildlife.
Shane Mahoney 02:46
I became a lover of animals from the time I could crawl, and I remain to this day — I can't tell you how much time I spent even today, looking at ducks in a small lake behind my home.
Mendel Skulski 02:59
That's so sweet. So clearly, this Shane here loves animals.
Shane Mahoney 03:04
That's true.
Mendel Skulski 03:04
Loves the outdoors.
Shane Mahoney 03:05
Absolutely.
Mendel Skulski 03:06
And supports the North American model.
Shane Mahoney 03:08
Sure
Mendel Skulski 03:09
Whatever that is. What is the North American model? What are we talking about?
Shane Mahoney 03:13
Well, first of all, the term is relatively new. And the term the North American model refers to the system of policies, laws, and institutions that are shared really, in a sense by Canada and the United States, that focus fundamentally on how wildlife is to be conserved in the two countries.
Adam Huggins 03:35
The NAM is many things. It's a set of principles for managing wildlife. And it also purports to be a historical account of the development of the conservation movement in the United States and Canada.
Shane Mahoney 03:46
It's a historic reality in the sense that the institutions that have been created international treaties, the schools of science, the discipline of wildlife management itself, the state and provincial agencies, the legislation, you know, all of these things, I mean, they're real, they're not theoretical, they're not conceptual. They actually exist.
Adam Huggins 04:07
So the NAM is a set of principles. It's a it's a historical account. But I think more than anything else, it's a story. It's a story about who is responsible for rescuing wildlife from the brink of annihilation here in North America, and about how they did it. And it's a story that's told by people who care deeply about wildlife.
Mendel Skulski 04:29
So why did you kick this thing off asking me if I've hunted anything? What does hunting have to do with this model?
Adam Huggins 04:37
That's what we're about to find out. On today's episode, we're going to ask: What is the NAM? Where did it come from? What are its proponents advocating for? And what impact is it having on how we relate to wildlife here in North America? And of course, we're going to speak to some folks who are challenging the NAM, and have their own ideas about how people could and should relate to wildlife. But whatever you may think of the NAM, you can't talk about how we manage many wild species that we live with on this continent without engaging with it. So from Future Ecologies, this is Model Citizens, part one: Fair Game,
Introduction Voiceover 05:15
Broadcasting from the unceded, shared, and asserted territories of the Penelakut, Hwlitsum, Lelum Sar Augh Ta Naogh and other Hul'qumi'num-speaking peoples, this is Future Ecologies — exploring the shape of our world through ecology, design and sound.
Adam Huggins 06:03
Okay, so to understand the NAM — that's the North American model... of...
Mendel Skulski 06:07
Wildlife conservation.
Adam Huggins 06:09
Exactly. You have to understand that it's both a descriptive and prescriptive enterprise. So let's start with what it's attempting to describe — the story that it has to tell. And I'm gonna introduce you to the storyteller.
Shane Mahoney 06:22
The term itself came from Dr. Valerius Geist
Mendel Skulski 06:26
— that's such a good name!
Shane Mahoney 06:27
— who's since passed.
Adam Huggins 06:28
Yeah, Valerius Geist, he was a Ukrainian-born Canadian scientist, who actually lived not very far from here on Vancouver Island. He passed away just this last summer before I was able to reach out to him for an interview. But I can say that he was a very well respected, and occasionally controversial wildlife biologist.
Shane Mahoney 06:48
He coined that term because he was in a very intense debate at the time, going back 25 years now over what would be the likely negative outcomes of game ranching.
Adam Huggins 06:59
That book on mountain goats that I talked about in the Goatwalker series — A Beast the Color of Winter — that was him.
Mendel Skulski 07:04
That was his!
Adam Huggins 07:05
Long story short, in the late 1980s, he becomes a vocal critic of the business practice of game ranching, which is keeping wild game animals for harvest of meat and other marketable parts.
Mendel Skulski 07:16
Keeping... like in fences?
Adam Huggins 07:19
Yes, it's sort of the terrestrial equivalent of salmon farming, right?
Mendel Skulski 07:22
Aha.
Adam Huggins 07:23
And Valerius Geist identified a lot of problems with this system that would eventually become major issues such as like the potential for disease transmission.
Mendel Skulski 07:32
Right, as we know with fish farms.
Adam Huggins 07:34
Yep. And altering the genetics of wild populations.
Mendel Skulski 07:36
As we know with fish farms.
Adam Huggins 07:37
Yeah. But he also argued that the very act of privatizing wildlife — keeping wild animals for private profit — threatened the foundation of North American wildlife conservation.
Shane Mahoney 07:50
So in that very intense debate, he said, we have a system in North America that is at risk. He believed that that system had done a remarkable job in the last 150 years of recovering wildlife. And in that he was absolutely historically correct.
Mendel Skulski 08:07
It's funny, I have kind of another interpretation of how wildlife has happened in North America. And it's not... it doesn't seem quite as optimistic. What system is he talking about? How have we recovered so much wildlife?
Shane Mahoney 08:21
Very few people involved in the conservation movement in Canada and the United States, at any level, have any real idea of how depleted wildlife was from about 1880 to 1920, for example. They have no idea that almost every species that we see as common today — that we look upon as a primarily a food source, for example such as elk or deer or wild turkeys, or waterfowl, things of this nature — that almost all of them would have been on an endangered species list if we'd had it.
Adam Huggins 08:55
So many listeners will be familiar with the wide-eyed descriptions of unbelievably large wildlife populations that were made by early European explorers and colonists here in North America,
Mendel Skulski 09:06
Right.
Shane Mahoney 09:07
Universally every single one of them was astounded by the amount of wildlife that they saw. Now, you have to put that up against where they were coming from. If you came from the bowels of London, England, believe me and you saw the expanses of Canada and the United States and the wildlife and beauty that were here. I mean, it must have been like, you know, reaching another planet, essentially, for people. But what happened, of course, is that they did take hold this idea in the European mind, that this was limitless.
Adam Huggins 09:37
I want to talk for a minute about this, like this abundance of wildlife that people saw. This is an interesting piece of the story that the storytellers of the NAM are telling. Which is that, you know, many people attribute this abundance of wildlife in North America, that European colonists were amazed by right? Many historians now attribute this abundance of wildlife to the sustainable lifeways and conservation practices of Indigenous peoples here in North America, which we'll discuss later in this episode. But some, including influential anthropologist William Denevan, have also pointed out that these wildlife populations almost certainly experienced significant increases at the time, due to introduced European diseases and their effects on Indigenous peoples.
Mendel Skulski 10:24
Oh! These folks are alleging that, like after contact, the European impact on Indigenous hunters effectively allowed wildlife populations to explode in a way that they hadn't been as populous immediately before.
Adam Huggins 10:39
Precisely.
Mendel Skulski 10:40
Wild.
Shane Mahoney 10:41
The destruction that then went on decimated human populations that had existed here for maybe 30,000 years, certainly back 15, 16, 17,000 years. And that led to an increase in the abundance of wildlife at that time.
Mendel Skulski 10:56
Huh... that's not a....
Adam Huggins 10:58
Not an idea that's commonly discussed.
Mendel Skulski 11:00
Yeah.
Adam Huggins 11:01
It is in line with recent research that has suggested that many areas in North America that had been maintained as open ecosystems by Indigenous peoples reforested, after diseases swept through those communities. And that that reforestation had a huge impact on global climate. Either way, there's no disputing that there were incredibly robust populations of wildlife across the continent in the decades and centuries following first contact. But by the time the civil war comes to an end, many, if not most of these populations are in sharp decline.
Shane Mahoney 11:32
It's hard to believe that it could happen at the scale it did with the speed with which it did. I mean, the passenger pigeon and the bison are two of the best examples. Massive populations of animals! The passenger pigeon being probably the most numerous bird on the planet, probably the most numerous that ever existed, as far as we know. And yet, within a period of a few decades, essentially, by virtue of human intervention, and also ecological processes, they were eliminated.
Mendel Skulski 12:01
Famously, there were flocks of passenger pigeons that literally blotted out the light of the sky for hours, I think, as they flew overhead.
Adam Huggins 12:09
Yeah.
Mendel Skulski 12:09
And somehow, we managed to hunt them to extinction in not a very long time.
Adam Huggins 12:15
Right. So you use the word hunt there. I mean, the causes for most of these declines, in hindsight, are pretty clear, right? Land conversion, and habitat loss were factors. And for the bison, of course, there was a calculated
Mendel Skulski 12:27
— right
Adam Huggins 12:27
— and successful effort to destroy them as a food source for Indigenous peoples.
Mendel Skulski 12:31
Right, it was an intentional campaign of starvation.
Adam Huggins 12:34
Yes. But in so many cases, Americans and Canadians simply killed and ate too many of these animals at the time. And it's kind of hard for most of us to imagine today. But in essence, anyone with a rifle or a trap could go out into the woods, and kill or harvest as many animals as they wanted. And they could eat as much as they could eat. And then they could sell the meat or the furs or the feathers, to booming markets in wildlife products across North America and Europe. And so as a result, so many iconic species of wildlife are hunted to near or complete oblivion, including, of course, well known examples like the passenger pigeon, but also sea otters, Right. And beavers.
Mendel Skulski 13:15
Uh huh
Adam Huggins 13:16
And deer!
Mendel Skulski 13:16
Wow!
Adam Huggins 13:17
And other species that we think of as common today.
Shane Mahoney 13:20
And so we had circumstances — even in the American Northeast, where white tails abounded, and where to this day they abound — where you know, you would have a major report in a newspaper would be the fact that a track of a white tailed deer was spotted, or children would be taken out of school to actually see it.
Mendel Skulski 13:38
Oh my god. Can you imagine like, deer watching tours, like we have whale watching boats now?
Adam Huggins 13:45
Right?
Mendel Skulski 13:45
That's wild.
Adam Huggins 13:46
Or like, kids, we got to take the day off of school, there's a deer in the neighborhood.
Mendel Skulski 13:52
You don't want to miss this opportunity!
Adam Huggins 13:54
I know. We're laughing now, because they're so abundant, but can you imagine?
Mendel Skulski 13:58
That's really trippy.
Adam Huggins 13:59
So this is where the story of the NAM starts. And the entire history of the development of the modern conservation movement and the institutions that have been created to support it in North America. It's too long and complex to tell here today. But the specific story that the NAM is focused on is actually a much smaller piece of this larger story. And it centers around a key historical figure. Your friend and mine: Theodore Roosevelt.
Mendel Skulski 14:24
Ooh! Good old Teddy.
Adam Huggins 14:26
So if you went to elementary school in the United States, or apparently in Canada, since you know who I'm talking about...
Mendel Skulski 14:32
Mostly just through, like, pop culture osmosis.
Adam Huggins 14:34
Yeah.
Mendel Skulski 14:34
I did not go to elementary school in the United States.
Adam Huggins 14:37
Well, if you had, you might have learned how Theodore Roosevelt was the great conservationist president. He was a Hunter.
Mendel Skulski 14:44
A hunter extraordinaire!
Adam Huggins 14:45
A birder, a naturalist, and President United States from 1901 to 1909. And during that time, he establishes the US Forest Service, and presides over a major expansion of federal protected lands, including national parks and national monuments, national forests, bird and game reserves. But in the world of the NAM, his most important contribution happens more than a decade before he becomes president: In 1887, when he founds an organization called... the Boone and Crockett club.
Mendel Skulski 15:15
Oh! Okay. Named after?
Adam Huggins 15:17
Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett.
Mendel Skulski 15:19
Those guys...
Adam Huggins 15:20
Who are basically like the mythic and somewhat problematic archetypes of American frontiersman.
Mendel Skulski 15:27
Right.
Adam Huggins 15:27
So already, it's kind of a nostalgic idea. They're harkening back to an earlier era of like the open American frontier, when the manly men of the time could go out and kind of, you know...
Mendel Skulski 15:38
Put animals on their heads and row down rivers.
Adam Huggins 15:41
Whatever you're picturing, that's probably what they were thinking too.
Shane Mahoney 15:45
When Roosevelt called the first meeting in his New York home of the Boone and Crockett club — wealthy hunters, these were the socialites, these were the wealthy people — and told all those wealthy people, you're here for two reasons. One is, we're going to say wildlife. And the second is you've done well by this country, so therefore, you're going to give something back.
Adam Huggins 16:03
So how would they save wildlife? By essentially replacing the unregulated market and subsistence hunting that was happening in North America at the time, with a system of regulated hunting based on a kind of Americanized, more egalitarian version of the European ideals of fair chase and sportsmanship.
Mendel Skulski 16:25
What do you mean by fair chase? What... what is that?
Adam Huggins 16:27
You're probably more familiar with it than you think. The term "fair chase" is actually a registered trademark of the Boone and Crockett Club, which still exists, by the way. And it basically means that the only ethical way to hunt an animal is if that animal has a reasonable ability to escape the hunter. Right? If it has a sporting chance. And the idea actually dates back to the European aristocracy. But it's been popularized in America by the Boone and Crockett club, and especially by this one incident that involves Roosevelt refusing to shoot a bear that had been tied to a tree, because of course, it just wouldn't have been sporting. And that's, of course, where teddy bear comes from.
Mendel Skulski 17:07
Wow!
Adam Huggins 17:08
Unfortunately, that bear was actually like put out of its misery, just not by Roosevelt. Anyway...
Mendel Skulski 17:13
He got to take the moral high ground.
Adam Huggins 17:15
He took the moral high ground and made a point out of it. And it became kind of like almost a piece of propaganda, right, that went out there into the world to kind of provide an example of what the Boone and Crockett club and its members were advocating for. As you might have guessed, while this was about giving wildlife a chance, it was also about pride, and a certain conception of masculinity.
Shane Mahoney 17:34
It was also about the idea that post the American Revolution, and the American Civil War, that, you know, Americans were getting soft. They were no longer the people of the small farm and the frontier, and they had to recover that or else America would become weak. Outdoor engagement and hunting in particular, those kinds of things were, in quotation marks, "manly" kinds of things to do.
Adam Huggins 18:00
So these ideas around sportsmanship are at the center of the Boone and Crockett Club's agenda to save wildlife.
Shane Mahoney 18:05
But out of that idea that we would do away with the commercial killing and sale of wildlife. And we would return it to a personal utilization kind of model. That was the core. And out of that his various systems, and institutions, and regulations, international agreements — they all came out of this.
Mendel Skulski 18:28
So wait — you're not allowed to sell hunted meat after this? You can't commodify hunted game?
Adam Huggins 18:34
Have you ever bought hunted meat from a supermarket?
Mendel Skulski 18:37
I guess not. Interesting.
Adam Huggins 18:39
Yeah. And that's part of what comes out of this. And just a few examples of the legislation that proponents of the NAM associated with this history. There's the Lacey Act of 1900.
Mendel Skulski 18:49
Whatever that means...
Adam Huggins 18:50
Which prohibits trade in illegal wildlife parts.
Mendel Skulski 18:53
Okay.
Adam Huggins 18:53
The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, which protects migratory birds between the US and Canada. The Pittman Robertson act of 1937 that provides funding to improve wildlife habitat based on an excise tax on firearms and ammunition.
Mendel Skulski 19:07
[Stammers] They're using taxation on firearms to protect wildlife?
Adam Huggins 19:14
That's right.
Mendel Skulski 19:14
Interesting.
Adam Huggins 19:15
And of course, it was the US Congress that passes all of this legislation. But it was the well connected members of the Boone and Crockett club that were directly or indirectly involved in basically transforming their ideas into law. People like Roosevelt, of course, but also like George Bird Grinnell and Gifford Pinchot, and William Sherman, and Aldo Leopold.
Mendel Skulski 19:35
I know one of those names.
Adam Huggins 19:37
They're all big names in wildlife conservation.
Mendel Skulski 19:39
Oh I'm showing my whole butt.
Adam Huggins 19:41
And they were all members of the Boone and Crockett club.
Mendel Skulski 19:43
Wow.
Adam Huggins 19:44
And some of them are members of the Bee which of course we talked about in season two.
Mendel Skulski 19:47
The Bee! Ian McTaggart Cowen.
Adam Huggins 19:50
That comes a little later. Anyway...
Shane Mahoney 19:52
We remember the big names. We remember the Roosevelts and Pinchots and the Grinnells, and people of that nature. But of course there were countless, countless unknowns who were passionate to play roles that history has not so much recorded.
Adam Huggins 20:07
It's an important point that Shane is making here. These folks who are very well known but who you do not know — nd that's totally fair — were important figures in the conservation movement in the US and Canada. But the story that the NAM tells is less concerned with other branches of that movement. For example, the more protectionist, hands-off approach to conservation that people associate with John Muir and the Sierra Club.
Mendel Skulski 20:30
Right.
Adam Huggins 20:30
But it also doesn't include minorities or women, despite their role in, for example, ending the widespread use of bird feathers in fashion for the sale in hats, right? That was a women's led movement.
Mendel Skulski 20:41
Right.
Adam Huggins 20:41
Like, if you look at the turn of the century women's fashion, it's beavers and feathers and wildlife, essentially, right, like lots of wildlife parts in use.
Mendel Skulski 20:51
I don't know if you've ever heard the sarcastic retort, like "what am I a milliner?"
Adam Huggins 20:56
No.
Mendel Skulski 20:56
So like you ask somebody a question that they would have no expertise in, and the response is "what am I a milliner?" Because a milliner is a maker of women's hats. And they basically had to be generalists in everything, because everything was being stuck on to hats.
Adam Huggins 21:11
Oh, I see.
Mendel Skulski 21:11
Yeah.
Adam Huggins 21:12
Really?
Mendel Skulski 21:12
Yeah.
Adam Huggins 21:13
That's interesting. That's interesting. And of course, the NAM isn't at all concerned with Indigenous people. We're going to come back to this later because it is obviously a huge problem. But in the meantime, I want to highlight what might be clear to listeners already, which is that this new conservation movement based on the shift from market and subsistence hunting to a sportsmanship kind of model, it was very successful in contributing to its central aim, which was to recover wildlife populations in North America.
Mendel Skulski 21:44
Righ — we know deer, we have elk, we've got turkeys.
Adam Huggins 21:47
Right.
Mendel Skulski 21:47
They're around.
Adam Huggins 21:48
Especially the population of... game species.
Mendel Skulski 21:51
Oh, oh! I never thought about that! Yeah, the things that we like to hunt and eat, they're around. The things that we're less concerned with, not so much.
Adam Huggins 22:05
So the NAM is a big part of how that happens. Today, instead of whitetail deer being extremely uncommon, right, they're like, over-abundant in many places. And you can see the legacy of this movement in the legislation that we have, and in the institutions that we have, and in the explosion of NGOs that espouse these same kinds of values around wildlife.
Shane Mahoney 22:24
And this was one of the great things that came out of it: the Ducks Unlimiteds of the world, etc, etc, etc. It spurred this kind of frenzy to identify yourself as being a member of an organization or an entity that was fighting for wildlife. And the amount of money that those organizations have collectively raised over a century, let's say now — some of them were born in the 1930s — is just absolutely mind boggling.
Mendel Skulski 22:52
Uh... we have some top shelf names in this episode: Valerius Geist, Ducks Unlimited.
Adam Huggins 22:59
Are you not familiar with Ducks Unlimited?
Mendel Skulski 23:00
No, I have no idea.
Adam Huggins 23:01
Really?
Mendel Skulski 23:02
Yeah. Oh, okay. I live under a rock.
Adam Huggins 23:04
Ducks Unlimited is probably like the premier waterfowl conservation organization in North America. It exists in both Canada and the United States. And they do tons of work conserving wetlands and creating wetlands and restoring wetlands. Specifically, because they want to increase the populations of waterfowl.
Mendel Skulski 23:20
For hunting explicitly?
Adam Huggins 23:22
I mean, yes and no, right? It's like, "yes and".
Mendel Skulski 23:24
For the love of ducks.
Adam Huggins 23:25
Yeah.
Mendel Skulski 23:25
But also...
Adam Huggins 23:26
And there are organizations like this everywhere. I mean, there's too many to count. And a local example is the BC Wildlife Federation.
Mendel Skulski 23:33
Heard of them.
Adam Huggins 23:34
Of which I myself am a member. They provide hunting insurance, so that I can go out and walk around with my crossbow without getting anything. And I've worked a lot with their wetlands education program, which is how I actually got into restoration in the first place. Like why I do what I do now is partly because I took one of the BC Wildlife Federation's wetlands institute programs, like a decade ago. So I've had a relationship with organizations like this, that goes back a long time. They do fantastic work in restoring wetland habitat and educating the public. And they do it on behalf of a hunter and angler-based membership. So this model is still very much alive today in the US and Canada.
Mendel Skulski 24:14
I feel like we've been kind of dancing around the whole thing, because you haven't actually told me what the model is. You've told me where it comes from, what it's doing. What is the model?
Adam Huggins 24:28
Right. So you know, 25 years ago, Valerius Geist, he's like "game ranching is a bad idea. It threatens the foundations of US conservation". To which you would ask "what are the foundations of US conservation?" And he's like, "Well, they go back to Theodore Roosevelt and these dudes. And you know that history comes forward to the present day." And this system is defined by what I believe are seven key principles.
Mendel Skulski 24:47
Nice. We love lists of principles.
Adam Huggins 24:50
We do [laughs] Are you ready for this one?
Mendel Skulski 24:51
Yeah.
Adam Huggins 24:52
Okay. So, seven key principles. Principle one: wildlife resources are a public trust. This means that wildlife shouldn't be privately owned, right?
Mendel Skulski 25:04
Sure.
Adam Huggins 25:04
Instead, they are effectively owned and managed by the state on behalf of all of us.
Shane Mahoney 25:09
So this was the idea that wildlife really wasn't owned by by anyone, but yet it was owned by everyone.
Mendel Skulski 25:16
Wildlife as the Commons.
Adam Huggins 25:18
So that's principle one.
Mendel Skulski 25:19
Okay. Principle two: markets for game are eliminated.
Adam Huggins 25:23
This means that dead wildlife products shouldn't be commodified. And it's why you can't just go to the store and buy parts of wild animals to eat, or to adorn your head with. Although, as the proponents of the NAM have noted, there is still a market in furs that kind of contravenes this principle.
Mendel Skulski 25:40
Right. Uh, what's principle three?
Adam Huggins 25:43
Principle three is allocation of wildlife is by law. And this basically means that the state gets to decide who has access to wildlife, and the when, and the why and the how.
Mendel Skulski 25:55
Uh, wait, what? It's publicly held for all of us... but only some of us part of the time?
Adam Huggins 26:04
Right, well, the state decides who and how. The state allocates the publicly held resource that is wildlife.
Shane Mahoney 26:11
You know, there had to be a regulated system whereby people will be allowed access to wildlife
Adam Huggins 26:16
Principle four: wildlife can only be killed for a legitimate purpose. And this principle, as you might guess, hinges entirely on the definition of...
Mendel Skulski 26:26
Legitimate!
Shane Mahoney 26:27
You couldn't just go out and destroy it for any reason. You had to have some kind of legitimate use. And of course, one of the primary uses was for food. And that's why, of course, virtually all state and provincial agencies very quickly passed regulations once they came into existence, to say you couldn't leave your harvest in the field. If you took that animal's life, you had to make use of that animal.
Mendel Skulski 26:52
But that use can't extend to just, like, taxidermy?
Adam Huggins 26:56
I guess that's arguable. Right. And I think there are still many people in many places who hunt primarily for that purpose. So the North American model, like these principles are sort of like the ideals. And the system as a whole generally reflects them. But it doesn't mean that in all circumstances, they are followed, as the proponents of the NAM would like them to be followed, if that makes sense.
Mendel Skulski 27:20
Right. Like, just like you said, with the fur trade that it still exists.
Adam Huggins 27:23
Yeah. So there are exceptions, I think that are pretty easy to find that prove the rule to a certain extent, right. On to principle five.
Mendel Skulski 27:30
Sure.
Adam Huggins 27:31
Wildlife are considered an international resource. Which means that one state shouldn't take unilateral action regarding wildlife that migrates across international boundaries, and what gives rise to international treaties like the ones for migratory birds. That one's pretty straightforward.
Mendel Skulski 27:47
Sure.
Adam Huggins 27:47
Number six: science is the proper tool to discharge Wildlife Policy. And this basically means that Western science should determine wildlife management practices.
Mendel Skulski 27:58
Woah. What was the alternative in their minds? Like, what other things guide policy according to these gentleman hunters?
Adam Huggins 28:04
Politics, business interests, right? So they wanted to make sure that whatever we did decide that the state should do in terms of allocating wildlife, it would be based on sound science.
Mendel Skulski 28:14
But then that also, as you as you hint at, definitionally or implicitly excludes non-western, i.e. Indigenous ways of knowing.
Adam Huggins 28:22
Yes. Okay. The last principle, principle seven: democracy of hunting is standard. And this final principle is key.
Shane Mahoney 28:32
There ought to be no class distinctions at all about having access to wildlife. That every citizen should have access to wildlife. And in a perfect world, of course, their access should be equal, and unimpeded.
Adam Huggins 28:46
So this is a key distinction between the American version of sportsmanship and the European one. To quote from the original paper on the topic of the NAM: "the European model allocated wildlife by land ownership and privilege, whereas in North America, all citizens in good standing can participate." That's the ideal anyway. And of course, privilege and land ownership continue to matter a lot in practice. So, taking a step back and looking at the principles as a whole. When I took my hunter education course, through the BC Wildlife Federation, I saw almost every single one of these principles kind of embedded in the curriculum as values. And the message of them together is that as direct, consumptive users of wildlife, hunters and anglers have a responsibility to provide for the conservation of wildlife and to maintain a kind of positive image of their various activities in the mind of the general public. So, that image of like the redneck hunter going out to drink some beers and shoot some animals...
Mendel Skulski 29:42
It's uncouth.
Adam Huggins 29:43
Uncouth, and like the complete opposite of what they're trying to cultivate.
Mendel Skulski 29:47
Right.
Adam Huggins 29:47
And I think that many hunters and anglers have embraced this as a key part of their identity of who they are — as stewards of wildlife.
Shane Mahoney 29:56
So all of a sudden, wildlife and patriotism, wildlife and nationhood became connected in a way they weren't ever connected before. And that citizenship and wildlife conservation, in whatever way that resonated with you, was important. And if you worked in the opposite direction, you simply weren't a good citizen.
Adam Huggins 30:19
And the proponents of the NAM feel that these values have been key, or maybe the key to conserving wildlife in North America.
Shane Mahoney 30:29
Was there a massive rescue of that wildlife by this system, which placed emphasis on individual harvest, and regulated harvest, and science, and so on and so forth? Of that there can be no question.
Adam Huggins 30:41
Or, as Geist writes in his book, "The North American model of wildlife conservation is one of the continent's great cultural achievements. However, its success depends on a functional democracy, an armed citizenry, and public acceptance of the idea of wildlife being a renewable resource for consumption." So what do you think about all of this? As somebody who cares deeply about the more-than-human world, but does not hunt, do you see yourself represented in this model?
Mendel Skulski 31:10
Well, I've never been told that, you know, hunting is my god-given, Nation-state-given right, and that I have some collective share of this natural resource, which is renewable, and all I need to do is armed myself and, and get a license, and get insurance. I've never been told that. That's not something that was offered to me as an opportunity. It sounds to me like it is still a very exclusive club of people who really get to involve themselves with this.
Adam Huggins 31:41
I think a lot of people would react that way. I would say that even though I have lately, picked up a crossbow to participate in this sort of model of conservation, I don't really relate to the story that they're telling. Do you relate to this at all?
Mendel Skulski 31:56
It's pretty bizarre to confront this idea of, quote, unquote, masculine ideal, and patriotic identity — like, things which I don't feel personally very in touch with myself — but how those concepts can be co-opted in the service of nature conservation, that's a really interesting thing to hear. And clearly enjoying the life on the land, in both just being present with it, and at some level consuming it in all those different ways, is an important vehicle to caring about it, and wanting to sustain it, and wanting it to thrive. But it also clearly limits the scope of what characters within that ecosystem you are really supporting, right? Those things that are closest to mind for food: deer, and ducks, turkeys, elk, and fish. And less so frogs and butterflies and bugs, and trees.
Adam Huggins 32:54
And I might add to that list: large carnivores.
Mendel Skulski 32:57
Huh.
Adam Huggins 32:58
And we're gonna get into everything that's left out... after the break. We're back!
Mendel Skulski 33:17
Hey.
Adam Huggins 33:18
I'm Adam.
Mendel Skulski 33:18
Mendel.
Adam Huggins 33:19
And this is Future Ecologies. Today, we're talking about the North American model of wildlife conservation or...
Mendel Skulski 33:25
The NAM.
Adam Huggins 33:26
Which purports to describe the principles behind the complex sets of laws and institutions and values that have defined the success of the conservation movement in North America. And now we're going to dig into some of the critiques of the NAM. And we're gonna get started by way of illustration. Have you ever encountered a Catamount?
Mendel Skulski 33:49
Not as far as I know.
Adam Huggins 33:50
What about a mountain devil?
Mendel Skulski 33:52
Uh...
Adam Huggins 33:53
Perhaps a swamp screamer?
Mendel Skulski 33:54
I mean...
Adam Huggins 33:55
A ghost cat?
Mendel Skulski 33:56
The way you're talking about these things makes me not so upset that I haven't... by those names, uh, no.
Adam Huggins 34:04
Me neither, to be honest. How about this: What's the difference between a cougar, a panther, a mountain lion, and a puma?
Mendel Skulski 34:14
I know this. Straight nothing. Trick question.
Adam Huggins 34:17
They're all names for the same animal. You want to give the Latin?
Mendel Skulski 34:20
Puma concolor.
Adam Huggins 34:21
That's right.
Mark Elbroch 34:22
It's listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the animal with the most common names in the world. And we know that there's over 100.
Mendel Skulski 34:31
Wait... all those creatures that you just mentioned, that was the same... those were Puma.
Adam Huggins 34:35
Those are all common names in various parts of the world for the Puma.
Mark Elbroch 34:38
And it's, of course, because of their huge range. They range from southern Canada all the way through North America and through South America all the way to the tip. And so, of course crosses so many kinds of people and different cultures and languages historically. And of course, each of these cultures had their own name for the species. So there's there's so many names for them. But it's all one animal.
Mendel Skulski 35:02
That's so wild.
Adam Huggins 35:03
Yeah. And this is Mark Elbroch
Mark Elbroch 35:05
And my official capacity, I am the director of the Puma or Mountain Lion or Cougar program for Panthera.
Mendel Skulski 35:13
We've got Valerius Geist, Ducks Unlimited, and Panthera
Adam Huggins 35:17
Yep.
Mendel Skulski 35:18
This just keeps getting better and better.
Mark Elbroch 35:19
We have the mission of conserving the world's wild cat species, and more importantly, the habitats in which they live.
Adam Huggins 35:28
And I got in touch with Mark, because he sent me his book almost exactly two years ago. It's called the Cougar Conundrum. It's actually where I heard about the NAM in the first place.
Mendel Skulski 35:37
This must be the guy to tell us a little more about mountain lions.
Adam Huggins 35:41
You got it.
Mark Elbroch 35:41
For folks who have any experience with housecats, you already know a lot about mountain lions. They're much the same in temperament, and in behavior, and expression. The big difference being that that mountain lions can take down prey that weigh 10 times as much as they do. Which is ,you know, both scary and inspiring.
Mendel Skulski 36:03
I'm gonna lean more towards scary here. How much does a mountain lion weigh?
Adam Huggins 36:08
I don't know. I'd have to look it up. You want me to look it up?
Mendel Skulski 36:10
Yeah, just to know like, what does that mean? What is 10 times a mountain lion?
Adam Huggins 36:17
They weigh anywhere between 64 and 220 pounds.
Mendel Skulski 36:23
Why does it need that much power?
Adam Huggins 36:26
I think that's a common reaction.
Mark Elbroch 36:28
People were passionate about mountain lions. They either hate them or they love them.
Adam Huggins 36:32
Part of the point of this book that Mark wrote is to introduce people to what we actually know about mountain lions. And to dispel these kinds of myths that persist around them. Mark has been studying mountain lions during a time when new technologies like GPS collars and motion triggered cameras have enabled scientists to learn a lot more about them than we previously knew.
Mark Elbroch 36:54
And it's really changed how we perceive the animal more broadly, as we delve in with new tools to uncover what was previously the secret lives of mountain lions. Tell me more! What secrets has this revealed?
Adam Huggins 37:07
Well, for one, Mark would describe mountain lions as as not aggressive, right, as very cautious. And for good reason.
Mark Elbroch 37:13
They're absolutely ruled by caution. They are one of the most cautious animals I've ever experienced or worked with. Over most of their range, they're not the top top top carnivore. They're what we call subordinate to other species. And it could be wolves, it could be brown bears, could be black bears, could be Jaguars. And I think that's really played into their personality — that they would always prefer an escape than a confrontation.
Adam Huggins 37:42
This caution might explain why neither you nor I have ever seen one. This is the whole thing with mountain lions: for an animal with a range that was essentially almost the entirety of both North and South America, they've been relentlessly hunted across this area for centuries, due in large part to the risks that they pose not not to us, but to our livestock. And they were basically entirely wiped out in central and eastern North America. In the West, they've fared much better, although their numbers are certainly reduced today compared to pre industrial times. And although the days of mountain lion bounties are gone, at least in most places, many animals are still killed when they come into conflict with us or with our livestock. For example, Mark studies mountain lions on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State.
Mark Elbroch 38:29
And here, the leading cause of death for the mountain lions that we're following is legal state removal after a depredation occurs. Folks have a couple of goats, or a couple of alpacas, or some sheep, maybe 20.
Adam Huggins 38:46
And maybe these animals are kept in the backyard, which backs onto some forested land.
Mark Elbroch 38:51
But what happens occasionally, when you live in a place like this, and you have animals like that is a mountain lion comes in and takes advantage of an easy to obtain meal. Especially if if the defences for these animals is minimal. And so the owner, many of them call the state agency, the wildlife agency and say, "Hey, a mountain lion just came in and killed my goat." And so the state generally comes and then they make a decision — with the landowner, but they can also make the decision on their own — to remove the mountain lion. And in general, that's the only option. It's a lethal removal. That means hunting it down and killing it.
Adam Huggins 39:33
And this is not uncommon across the remaining range of the mountain lion: they'll attack some livestock, and then the retribution is going to be swift and final. And just by way of example, Mark and I had to reschedule our interview several times because he was dealing with a situation just like this.
Mark Elbroch 39:52
In this particular case, this week was a little bit crazy because it was like a soap opera of what happened and led to the various cats being killed.
Adam Huggins 40:01
To make a long story short, a local landowner spotted a female a mountain lion with two cubs next to their chicken coop. In this case, the chickens were actually really well defended. They were in a solid coop.
Mark Elbroch 40:12
So the chickens were safe, they killed the cat anyway. It orphaned two kittens. These kittens then ended up killing alpacas this week on another property, and the state removed them. But why it was a curious case was that the property that they killed these alpacas on had had two other depredation incidents just in the last three, maybe four months. And so they'd already removed cats on this single property. Because the livestock owner was refusing to take actions to defend their livestock. They just said it was too much work. They didn't want to put them in at night, put them in an enclosure, have a roof over them. They just let them wander through this timbered property adjacent a huge chunk of woods.
Mendel Skulski 40:59
Yeah I mean, why would you bother when you can just call the state and have them shoot your cats.
Mark Elbroch 41:03
And I have absolutely supportive of removing an animal that is endangering livestock, or making people feel unsafe, or a threat to human populations. I mean, that's all fine with me. What I am not fine with is when owners of livestock take absolutely no responsibility for them. And assume that the only solution is after the fact that when they're killed, that they can just remove a cat from the environment.
Adam Huggins 41:30
This is a story that plays out in many places where our lives intersect with the lives of large predators. In this case, it's exacerbated by the perverse incentives that you just mentioned — that how can it be cheaper for the livestock owners to get the state to remove all of these animals than it is for them to just protect their livestock?
Mark Elbroch 41:49
There is money available to call the state agency, public money will pay for the gas for that warden, their time to come to the house, pay for a hound handler to come in and chase that cat, pay for the time to shoot that cat, the bullets and the rifle, all the material. And yet there's no public money to help that very same community member build a fence.
Mendel Skulski 42:10
Yeah, granted, that's a bad incentive. But let's bring this back to the North American model. What? How are these things connected?
Adam Huggins 42:17
Well, let's acknowledge first that NAM or no NAM, there has always been some conflict between human beings and large predators. And of course, both Mark and Shane agree that there are sometimes difficult choices to be made when conflicts do arise.
Shane Mahoney 42:34
Who should dictate the level of risk that society is willing to assume?
Mark Elbroch 42:39
There will always probably be a little bit of conflict. But if we were to change as a culture to accommodate living with these large carnivores, including mountain lions, we could reduce the risks of that conflict so much that we barely even think about it.
Adam Huggins 42:54
And so the reason that we're talking to Mark here about mountain lions is because he thinks that one of the big barriers to the kind of changes that he wants to see is the NAM. And I want to discuss those intersections here. So the first one is cultural, and the second one is financial. So the cultural side relates to the history of the NAM that we've been discussing. The whole movement proudly proclaims its origins to be with these prominent gentleman hunters at the turn of the last century.
Mark Elbroch 43:26
So that's exactly the era that sort of shaped the principles of the North American model today. And you know, born of that Teddy Roosevelt era, where carnivores were seen as enemies.
Adam Huggins 43:38
So the Teddy Roosevelts of the world they, they often had a fairly dim view of these large predators. In his own words, Roosevelt described mountain lions, somewhat paradoxically, as, quote, very cowardly, and yet bloodthirsty and ferocious.
Mendel Skulski 43:54
That's a classic war enemy propaganda, right, like both conniving and evil and like, slimy and not... not deserving of life.
Adam Huggins 44:03
Yeah, absolutely. And part of the reason for that is that at the time, these hunters felt that large predators were competing for their game, which was scarce!
Shane Mahoney 44:15
And this enters the fray at the same time that this idea of Leopold's and others of wildlife management starts to surface: the idea that we can manage, we can manipulate, we can be deliberate in where we want populations to go. But we also went through a period of vast ignorance with regard to the role of carnivores. We had really no idea.
Adam Huggins 44:35
This is before it was widely understood how critical large predators are to the health of ecosystems.
Mark Elbroch 44:41
Without these large carnivores that really connect things and ensure that energy and nutrients are really moving in as many ways as possible and across as diverse set of pathways as possible. You're going to see that system become just like an empty shell. It looks beautiful, but it is not the system that can support resilience and health over the long term.
Adam Huggins 45:04
What Mark is saying here feels kind of like common knowledge to us now, right? But at the time, you know, 100 years ago, they just didn't know this stuff. And even though we kind of understand this now, that understanding has been slow to filter into policy and practice.
Shane Mahoney 45:19
But you know, it took us so long to understand that these carnivores played a role. And they were neither villains nor competitors. They were the most like us. They were out there chasing, pursuing, capturing, and killing other living things, and consuming them.
Adam Huggins 45:41
So while the model has had huge benefits for game species, the results have been more mixed for large predators. The NAM has benefited them: significant areas of habitat for large predators have been protected as a byproduct of protecting land for game species.
Mendel Skulski 45:59
And they have more prey available to them.
Adam Huggins 46:02
Sure. But the negative attitudes towards these large predators have persisted in both our cultural values and in our policy. Mark says that large predators are still treated like a threat to the game animals that the NAM was created to recover, and also to the domestic livestock that our society tends to value in kind of the same way that we value wild game species.
Mark Elbroch 46:23
The actual model itself emphasizes the need to have abundant game populations over a priority for healthy ecosystems.
Adam Huggins 46:35
So that's the cultural aspect.
Mendel Skulski 46:36
Right, but you mentioned that there's also a financial aspect to this, how does that come in?
Adam Huggins 46:41
Of course it is. It's always about the money. So, there is this aspect about the funding models that we have set up to support conservation, and about which constituencies our land management institutions have been set up to serve. One result of the development of the NAM at an institutional level, is that hunters and anglers provide a ton of funding — and for many US state wildlife agencies, the majority of the funding — through taxes on their gear, and through hunting licenses, and through their membership in organizations
Shane Mahoney 47:10
In the United States, where if you buy certain pieces of equipment associated with hunting or angling, there's tax on that. And a portion of that goes to each state has raised billions and billions of dollars for wildlife conservation in that country.
Adam Huggins 47:26
And this fact is held up by proponents of the NAM as a huge success usually. It's true that hunters and anglers bear a disproportionate amount of the burden for funding these institutions. Just for example, sports hunters made up only about 6% of the population of the United States in 2011, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service. And by the way that 6% was 89% male and 94% white. What this means in practice is that many state agencies that are supposed to be managing and allocating wildlife democratically — on behalf of the population as a whole — Mark says that they've become very responsive to this particular constituency.
Mark Elbroch 48:07
And of course, it also directs the money. So it blocks money from going to certain conservation initiatives, or certain priorities for species. And it redirects it to very specific agendas and objectives that, of course, support that larger North American model.
Adam Huggins 48:25
By the way, Shane is quite aware that this is an issue.
Shane Mahoney 48:27
They didn't tax backpacks, they didn't tax hiking shoes, they taxed those people: the hunters, and the anglers eventually, hunters first. And so all of a sudden that money went into — primarily into — game species. It wasn't that the hunters demanded that, by the way, the ammunition manufacturers and so on and so forth, demanded that. Because the people who were using their products were the hunters and anglers, and therefore they want their money spent on hunting and angling.
Adam Huggins 49:02
So there's some path dependency here: we started taxing hunters and anglers, and so the institutions that we've created have sort of turned around to try to benefit hunters and anglers. Which creates a really weird situations sometimes. For example, there's a relatively small group of sports hunters who specialize in using hounds to chase down and hunt mountain lions. And Mark says that state agencies are, you know, so receptive to hunters in general, that it's these folks who hunt mountain lions, who are the most effective advocates for them within the system.
Mendel Skulski 49:32
Weird. That's a little surprising at first, but it's also just a mirror for what the North American model was doing before, right? Like there's this thing that we like to kill. Let's have more of it, please. And let's advocate for that. So... it feels kind of perverse, but it makes sense that the folks who are hunting these predators are also the ones saying that, hey, we want to make our game here as sustainable as we possibly can.
Adam Huggins 49:59
Absolutely. For better and worse in the United States, at least, there's the system of wildlife management that privileges consumptive users, and game species. And that's kind of that is the model of the NAM. It's working there.
Mendel Skulski 50:11
Yeah.
Adam Huggins 50:11
It just means that it might not be working for everybody or anybody else. And Mark argues that the proponents of the NAM are exacerbating these inequities, because the story that they're telling can give the kind of false impression that it's hunting that saved wildlife in North America, when in reality, it was the regulation and curtailment of hunting.
Mark Elbroch 50:35
It keeps putting out these ideas that I think are problematic for, for many reasons. But like, for instance, that hunting is essentially required to do conservation; that hunters are the people who are the greatest conservationists. And what I think that narrative does that hinders my work, is it creates a dichotomy and keeps emphasizing the division between hunters and non-hunters. And whenever you create that dichotomy, and emphasize it, you now have opposition. And it's only through collaboration that we're going to see real progress and conservation and a real work towards coexistence of large carnivores and people.
Mendel Skulski 51:30
So how do we dissolve that dichotomy?
Adam Huggins 51:33
That's the question. And, you know, Mark isn't the only person that thinks this. Shane is also very sensitive to these critiques of the model. He very much wants to see a greater diversity of people contributing financially to conservation, and also getting a seat at the sort of table of wildlife management, right? He acknowledges that hunters are only part of the picture. So as always, it's a little bit complicated. You could argue that Valerius Geist and Shane Mahoney and the other proponents of the NAM, if you read their work, it has this kind of triumphal narrative around hunters and anglers and consumptive users that I think can be alienating to other constituencies. At the same time, you know, you sit down and talk to Shane in person, it's a different story. He's looking at the global scale,
Shane Mahoney 52:21
We have a million species that are currently endangered on this planet. And right now, at least, we don't have nearly enough money to deal with it. So I like to start with the big picture problems, and say that, I'd like to have more people concerned, and a lot more money devoted, and a lot less imperiled on this planet than we currently have. And I believe that there's plenty of money in the world to solve the conservation problems. It would take a tiny fraction of global GDP — a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction — to put us on a road to recovery everywhere. But because too few people care, we won't get that money.
Adam Huggins 53:02
Here's the paradox of what Shane is saying. I think that part of the danger of a model of conservation that celebrates consumptive users above other people that like to engage with the more than human world, is that there just aren't enough consumptive users to support all have those needs of all of those different species during this biodiversity crisis that we're in. Even in the most rural areas, consumptive users are almost never a majority of the population. Meanwhile, more and more people are getting into non-consumptive outdoor activities like hiking and photography and birdwatching, right?
Mendel Skulski 53:39
Tax the binoculars.
Adam Huggins 53:40
Well, that's just the point!
Mendel Skulski 53:41
Tax the hiking boots.
Adam Huggins 53:43
There have been attempts in the United States to tax outdoor gear in the same way that firearms are taxed to support conservation. But so far, the corporations that make these products have been effective in basically torpedoing these efforts. So it hasn't happened yet. But there is public support for legislation like this. And we might see it happen in our lifetimes. But even if that happens, you know, it might help shore up the NAM financially, maybe even shifts policy within state agencies, right, it might solve some of these problems if more people are contributing. But there's kind of a deeper question here about the NAM, which is: is this really a model that we want to embrace? Is this a story that we want to keep telling ourselves?
Mark Elbroch 54:31
There are things within the current what they're calling the North American model that are well worth keeping. You know, that wildlife are publicly owned in the sense that you know, everybody's invested, but there are other parts of it that just should be thrown out completely or altered. And for me, what I would hope a new approach would emphasize would be that the priority is habitat for ecosystem health and biodiversity. It is not abundant game populations. It is a focus on healthy, integrated human wildlife communities. And I think any approach moving forward needs to recognize that humans are part of the ecosystem, that we aren't separate. And that healthy human communities are connected to those ecosystems they live adjacent to or within or intermixed with, and that conservation needs to have that at its core.
Adam Huggins 55:27
Shane says that he maintains an open mind to new approaches like this.
Shane Mahoney 55:32
A lot of the writings that are coming out challenging the model, if you will, or recommending change are very reasonable. I believe sustainable use of wildlife can be a major incentive for people to conserve nature, I do believe that. But I am totally fine with exploring worldviews in which it is not the case — if the evidence indicates that we can, in the long term, sustain wildlife populations, and secondly, maintain human cultural diversity.
Adam Huggins 56:07
So while the arguments around the NAM and around wildlife management can get really, really heated, my impression from speaking to Shane and Mark is that there actually are a lot of shared values and goals here.
Mark Elbroch 56:21
The world is not black and white. We can find allies for the conservation of species in so many places, and that it's through breaking down the divisions and sort of obstacles — if we can break those down and recognize there are allies across the aisle, that we could really see all sorts of new opportunities for how we might coexist with large carnivores, and yet still have healthy human communities.
Adam Huggins 56:49
Personally, I've found that the seven principles that the NAM articulates are actually really helpful and understanding the institutions that we currently have for conservation, and how they developed — why they exist the way that they do. On the other hand, I do think that there are flaws in the story that the NAM is telling. It leaves a lot out. And I think it's inadequate as a proposal for the future of wildlife conservation.
Mendel Skulski 57:14
So how are we going to fix the story?
Adam Huggins 57:16
Well, in part two of this mini-series on the NAM, we're going to take a look at a part of North America where folks are practicing and articulating a completely different mode for human-wildlife relationality. And we're going to address some even more fundamental issues with the NAM. Namely, how science is used within the model and the almost complete erasure of indigenous peoples from it.
Mendel Skulski 57:39
Hell yeah.
Adam Huggins 57:40
So next time we continue this conversation.
Mendel Skulski 57:43
We'll see you then. Future Ecologies is an independent production, made possible by our supporters on Patreon. For citations and a transcript of this episode, visit us at futureecologies.net
Adam Huggins 58:09
This episode was produced by myself Adam Huggins
Mendel Skulski 58:12
And me, Mendel Skulski. It featured the voices of Shane Mahoney and Mark Elbroch. And with music by Thumbug, Museum of No Art, and Sunfish Moon Light.
Adam Huggins 58:26
Special thanks to Mark Elbroch. Julian Fisher, Amanda Hall, And to the Sitka foundation for supporting our fourth season. We're also on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. The handle is always futureecologies.
Mendel Skulski 58:40
Okay.
Adam Huggins 58:41
See you in part two.