Can recreational hunting be justified as invasive species population control?

[ChippyTurtle]

What about the optics of the scary human hunting the elderly lion with a rifle?

Newsflash, animals don't go for hard to kill, equal fights to survive and eat. That lion will chase down and single out the slowest, weakest gazelle and kill and eat it. If he gets isolated, a pack of hyenas will set upon him just as quick.

And if it's managed and regulated correctly, they don't even hunt the healthy lions, it's the old and elderly, or the populations overpopulated.

A link on a briefing from the IUCN on trophy hunting:

https://www.iucn.org/commissions/co...uli-briefing-paper-informing-decisions-trophy

 

[Septy]

My first thought would be that humans are probably the reason why culling needs to happen in the first place, but then again I guess stuff like this can happen without human interference, too? I'd love for a biologist to chime in here.

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You're right we are the reason this needs to happen. I'm not sure what you mean what exactly can happen without humans? Anyway, even though humans are mainly the cause hunting is still very important. It keeps populations under control which limits their impact on agricultural damage and human accidents. It also brings in a lot of money for conservation from guns, ammo, and hunting licenses, etc.

 

[Shadybiz]

Here in my neck of the woods in NJ, we have shitloads of deer. I like deer. They're cute, and I like to watch them walking around with their babies in the summer. But...they are dangerous to drivers. Hit a deer at 50 mph, and it's like hitting concrete. So, I'm okay with them being hunted to thin the population. Not into it myself...I don't think I could do the field dressing bit, but if people want to do it, have at it, as long as they're obeying the rules.

Obviously I'm not down with hunting endangered species or anything like that; that's just disgusting.

 

[Xe4]

Yes, although reintroducing natural predators seems to be more effective at solving the issue overall.

Though I have nothing against hunting "recreationally" so long as the meat is used for food and the hunters go through the correct process to hunt whatever animal.

 

[Fudgepuppy]

It's kind of how hunting is done in Sweden. Lots of restrictions on how many elk and deer are allowed to be shot each year. It seems to work just fine.

 

[Murfield]

Kind of seems like an excuse for ones hobbies to me.

Holocene extinction - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I mean, are these recreational hunters carefully monitoring animal populations, their growth and decay rates in the ecosystem?

It strikes me as very dishonest and kind of harmful to try and justify recreational hunting as "population control". I am not debating
whether or not recreational hunting should or shouldn't be allowed. Just annoys me when people try to "justify" it as something it clearly isn't.

 

[Ogodei]

If it's for culling invasive species, it's for a purpose and not entirely recreational then

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It's recreational in the sense that you get most of the culling done on a volunteer basis. People go out to the game lands and hunt deer and pay their own way, instead of the government needing to hire culling teams.

 

[KHarvey16]

Kind of seems like an excuse for ones hobbies to me.

Holocene extinction - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I mean, are these recreational hunters carefully monitoring animal populations, their growth and decay rates in the ecosystem?

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States and localities have officials and experts that set hunting policies.

 

[Panic Freak]

Yes

 

[Murfield]

States and localities have officials and experts that set hunting policies.

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Yeah, but those limits are set to prevent over-hunting. Not to ensure sufficient "population control" is provided.

 

[Jest]

Yes.

As an example and as a non-American, the lionfish became a massive problem (they are venomous, eat everything, fast at reproducing, all the things that make a good invasive) in the Caribbean in the late 2000s. There was a pretty big educational campaign in my country that involved teaching people how to properly prepare them without getting stuck with their venomous spines as well as advertising their meat to be similar to grouper. This has resulted in a significant decrease in their population (though not outright removal).

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The lionfish are still a problem in the Keys.

 

[KHarvey16]

Yeah, but those limits are set to prevent over-hunting. Not to ensure sufficient "population control" is provided.

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How do you separate those two concepts?

 

[kvetcha]

Licensed hunting is an extremely important part of animal conservation.

 

[ContraWars]

Hunting of all sorts is necessary. Can't tell that to environmentalists, though. They are up their own asses, sniffing their own farts about everything.
Look at the Newfoundland seal hunt in Atlantic Canada. The only reason celebrities care is because the animal looks cute. You have assholes like Paul McCartney showing up to point fingers and shame people. They would just eat all the fish and starve to death, if not be so overpopulated that they end up crushed and killed in the ice, washing up on beaches every winter.

 

[show me your skeleton]

they made a documentary about this, OP, it's really interesting -

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8244784/

 

[Murfield]

How do you separate those two concepts?

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You have a upper limit, telling you how much can be hunted without threatening conservation. Do you also have a lower limit stating the minimum number of animals that need to be hunted for conservation?

 

[TickleMeElbow]

I think in Australia you can just go out and kill as many feral cats as you want, because they eat all the endangered native critters.

 

[Deleted member 9241]

Without hunting, the amount of deer in Michigan would be insane.

 

[TheCthultist]

Absolutely, though often times thats the result of human interference to begin with.
Using New York as an example, since wolves were hunted to near-extinction around here to better protect livestock nearly a century ago, we now have no natural predators to keep the whitetail deer. Short of the occasional mountain lion which is already very limited in how far they travel, the deer's only real consistent predators in this area are vehicles. So hunting has become the only effective way of controlling their population... and while I'm all for reintroducing wolves to the region, I'm sure that wouldn't end well for the wolves, more than for the deer.

 

[Boiled Goose]

Trophy hunting can provide much needed money for conservation. Suggesting trophy hunting be stopped deprives local economies of money and resources to be able to fund and maintain wildlife refuges and could possibly force more people to hunt the animals for economic well-being.

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Wow what a terrible argument.
Surely there's other ways to fund local economies and conservation than something as barbaric and unnecessary as trophy hunting.

 

[uzipukki]

It's kind of how hunting is done in Sweden. Lots of restrictions on how many elk and deer are allowed to be shot each year. It seems to work just fine.

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Same in Finland. Moose, bear, wolfs etc. are all hunted controllably. You have to get a license and there's a limited number of them per season. If you kill one of the animals without a license or do it outside of the hunting season, you get slapped with a hefty fine.

 

[Captain Tuttle]

I think in Australia you can just go out and kill as many feral cats as you want, because they eat all the endangered native critters.

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Cats are pretty terrible, I remember reading somewhere how many birds they kill a year, the number is insane

 

[KHarvey16]

You have a upper limit, telling you how much can be hunted without threatening conservation. Do you also have a lower limit stating the minimum number of animals that need to be hunted for conservation?

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If the population of a particular animal is out of control or not being culled enough through voluntary hunting they'll bring in paid teams to do the job.

 

[Volimar]

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These traps are great, but they usually still shoot them right after the cage drops or they burrow under and then they're too wise to the cages to get caught with them again.

 

[Mulciber]

My first thought would be that humans are probably the reason why culling needs to happen in the first place, but then again I guess stuff like this can happen without human interference, too? I'd love for a biologist to chime in here.

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Here's the way I'd explain it in brief. There is almost nowhere left that can be considered a truly natural ecosystem. We've changed our environment so much, in so many ways, that such a thing essentially doesn't exist anymore in places like North America.

Note that I don't just mean the obvious things like pollution and global warming. Roads, damns, cities, crops, telephone lines, etc. etc. Animals and plants rarely can just settle into a natural balance, even if you're talking about a 40,000 acre forest or something. These lands have to be actively managed. And that definitely includes culling invasive species.

Around here, coyotes are a huge problem. In fact, we don't even quite know the scale of it, though we have been studying it. We know they have reduced the numbers of several species, though. They have heavily preyed on whitetail dear. We used to think they just ate fawns, but now we know they attack adults as well. They also eat rabbits, turtles, and other small animals.

And before the 1960s, there wasn't a coyote in the state. We're taking them at a rate of about 40,000 a year, and it's not enough. In fact, DNR instituted a bounty on them a couple of years ago.

One thing a recent Warnell study looked at was how they even get here. How they move around. Up above, when listing how humans have changed the landscape, I mentioned telephone lines. Well, that was a major culprit. We discovered they like to travel along the cuts made to put up power lines. And that gets them around quite well. If it weren't for roads, powerlines, acres of crops, etc. we wouldn't have coyote here at all, and they wouldn't be killing the natural species that live here.

And coyotes are just one example. Don't even get me started on cogongrass. Fuck cogongrass. It accidentally arrived as a seed in a packing container from Japan in 1911. Shouldn't even be on this continent. Now, it has spread to several states. Estimates are something like 1.5 million acres.

 

[Burt]

Kind of seems like an excuse for ones hobbies to me.

Holocene extinction - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I mean, are these recreational hunters carefully monitoring animal populations, their growth and decay rates in the ecosystem?

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Generally, the government that makes the hunting legal and regulated in the first place is, yes.

Modern recreational hunting (as in, within like, the last 100 years) probably accounts for less than a tenth of a percent of the lost species in the anthropocene extinction. The overwhelming majority of species are lost due to habitat destruction, pollution, and commercial hunting/fishing.

The end result of those things is that the remaining population of a species absolutely becomes vulnerable to fringe (generally illegal) hunting cases, like for rhino horns, but recreational hunting as sanctioned by any government that isn't basically a failed state has little impact on sending a species to extinction, and is usually run (or at least administered) by some of the most conservation-minded people out there. Hunting specifically-designated invasive and overpopulated species as a method of population control is about as environmentally neutral as it gets.

Morally, ethically, sure, whatever argument you want to make you can make, but there's no need to get worked up over deer or boar or anacondas in Florida.

 

[Kyuuji]

Yes, absolutely.

 

[Westbahnhof]

Wouldn't it be more efficient in the long term to just reintroduce the natural predator? Treat the cause not the symptoms, you know?

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I know people have pointed this out already, and you didn't exactly say that, but the thought of introducing predators that take care of all of Australia's invasive species is so funny to me.
Imagine the monstrous freak of a creature that preys on cats and rabbits and deer and goats and foxes and pigs and water buffalo and dromedary camels and bees and wasps and fire ants and trouts and pigeons and...

 

[Septy]

Kind of seems like an excuse for ones hobbies to me.

Holocene extinction - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I mean, are these recreational hunters carefully monitoring animal populations, their growth and decay rates in the ecosystem?

It strikes me as very dishonest and kind of harmful to try and justify recreational hunting as "population control". I am not debating
whether or not recreational hunting should or shouldn't be allowed. Just annoys me when people try to "justify" it as something it clearly isn't.

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That link you posted has nothing to do with what you're talking about. Populations are determined by the US Fish and Wildlife department. They monitor and calculate the populations of certain wildlife every year. Then this goes into consideration when determining the number of hunting licenses to approve and the quote of animals that need to be killed to prevent an exponential growth of some species.

 

[Doober]

Yes.

As an example and as a non-American, the lionfish became a massive problem (they are venomous, eat everything, fast at reproducing, all the things that make a good invasive) in the Caribbean in the late 2000s. There was a pretty big educational campaign in my country that involved teaching people how to properly prepare them without getting stuck with their venomous spines as well as advertising their meat to be similar to grouper. This has resulted in a significant decrease in their population (though not outright removal).

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Lionfish really are tasty af

 

[TheCthultist]

?? What if the species was introduced to a non-native habitat and flourished? You want to bring more non-native species in?

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[Murfield]

Generally, the government that makes the hunting legal and regulated in the first place is, yes.

Modern recreational hunting (as in, within like, the last 100 years) probably accounts for less than a tenth of a percent of the lost species in the anthropocene extinction. The overwhelming majority of species are lost due to habitat destruction, pollution, and commercial hunting/fishing.

The end result of those things is that the remaining population of a species absolutely becomes vulnerable to fringe (generally illegal) hunting cases, like for rhino horns, but recreational hunting as sanctioned by any government that isn't basically a failed state has little impact on sending a species to extinction, and is usually run (or at least administered) by some of the most conservation-minded people out there. Hunting specifically-designated invasive and overpopulated species as a method of population control is about as environmentally neutral as it gets.

Morally, ethically, sure, whatever argument you want to make you can make, but there's no need to get worked up over deer or boar or anacondas in Florida.

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Not my point at all, I think claiming recreational hunting is a form of conservation is dishonest. I am not telling people not to do it. Just be honest about it.

That link you posted has nothing to do with what you're talking about. Populations are determined by the US Fish and Wildlife department. They monitor and calculate the populations of certain wildlife every year. Then this goes into consideration when determining the number of hunting licenses to approve and the quote of animals that need to be killed to prevent an exponential growth of some species.

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I referenced the holocene extinction because I think it is a cautionary tale as to the influence of human hunting on extinction rates. Its pretty easy to try to justify hunting as a means of population control because it is convenient. Quotas are in place to prevent over-hunting not to specify a minimum amount of culling.

 

[Dr.Phibes]

Yes, although it can get ridiculous like with pheasants in Europe.

 

[TheMango55]

Not my point at all, I think claiming recreational hunting is a form of conservation is dishonest. I am not telling people not to do it. Just be honest about it.

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Are you trying to claim that recreational hunting doesn't help at all with conservation? Or that people doing the hunting aren't doing it for conservation reasons?

Because natural predators aren't doing it for that reason either.

 

[msdstc]

This already is a thing and it's crucial particularly with deer population in certain areas. It's crucial for their own ecosystem not just for "pest" purposes either in a sense that it's not just for the convenience of humans. I would never personally be able to do it but it makes perfect sense why it's necessary.

 

[Murfield]

Are you trying to claim that recreational hunting doesn't help at all with conservation? Or that people doing the hunting aren't doing it for conservation reasons?

Because natural predators aren't doing it for that reason either.

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Mostly the latter? The former is a more difficult question to answer. I don't think there is a strong correlation between the most popular animals to hunt for sport and the most invasive species. If they do happen to overlap in a particular reason it is most likely a coincidence.

Humans aren't natural predators: we are an invasive species. Also natural predators aren't doing it for recreational reasons nor claiming it's a form of deliberate conservation. This ties in with what I stated previously, I think it is dishonest to try and justify recreational hunting is a form of deliberate conservation.

 

[Deleted member 8468]

Its a shame hunting is so misunderstood. Hunting fees are the largest and most consistent source of conservation funds in the US by far. In some areas like the east coast deer populations would overrun farms and destroy fields if left unchecked, and they carry ticks that spread lyme disease. In other areas animal populations are closely regulated and are hunted by tags, and most areas I'm aware of are fairly strict in enforcing these tags with high fines. Most hunters are educated on determining the age of an animal, and don't kill young animals. On top of that its the most humane way of eating meat without supporting large inhumane slaughterhouses.

The connection with gun culture is there, but probably not in the way most here would think of it. I know plenty of hunters that don't agree with things like assault weapons being so easy to get, and the total lack of gun control. You wouldn't want to go deer hunting with an AR-15 anyway, you'd want a higher caliber rifle to ensure the kill so the animal wouldn't suffer.

Article below goes into the history a bit, and what the current status of hunting looks like in the US.

https://www.npr.org/2018/03/20/593001800/decline-in-hunters-threatens-how-u-s-pays-for-conservation

 

[ChippyTurtle]

Wow what a terrible argument.
Surely there's other ways to fund local economies and conservation than something as barbaric and unnecessary as trophy hunting.

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I made three other posts in this thread, but the gist is....not really? Say instead of funding protected areas with tourism, you fund it through foreign aid, that's fun and dandy but not sustainable or a good idea in the age of Trump. That leaves farmland, factories, rural depopulation for the cities, and the end result instead of local economies incentivized to keep protected areas they are seen as drains and untapped land. Chop up areas for farmland or industry and your screwing up the area anyway.

There is nothing barbaric about hunting done in a sustainable, conservationist matter, anymore than blaming the cat for killing the bird for no reason at all.

It's also absurd to call hunting unnecessary cause the reasons hunting is unnecessary are the acres of farmland, factory farms and industry that render our modern lifestyle and destroy ecosystems, place animals in horrid conditions before death. But a quick and easy death by a bullet in the brain is "barbaric".

 

[Pendas]

Yeah, just look at Florida. 90% of the mammal population in the Everglades was wiped out because of the Burmese Python outbreak. It's gotten so bad the Governor announced a new initiative for year-round Python Hunting along with other programs to try and get rid of them.

 

[Maneil99]

Why need a biologist to chime in? It's pretty simple, humans have taken over the world and as a result of our activities, we change the environments and ecosystems. In my opinion while it's important to realize our impact and position on top of the food chain, it's also important to recognize that we are animals too.

The wolf that eats the deer, no one blinks at that, but the hunter that shoots the deer is tarred. Why? Cats kill for fun (well for cultivating their hunting skill) and too many people are content to let them roam free.

Undertaking the position that we need to restore nature to some pre-human existence is a bad position, made from ignorance, divorced from the reality of things like factory farming, overfishing, and "evil" capitalistic ideas (that surprise, are traced to the economic reality of needing money to live) like desired products, or the fact that a bullet kills a lot faster and humane than factory farming.

Wrapping ideas for conservation into things like "help the cute animal!" Is appallingly elitist and tone deaf to the needs of other humans.

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Yikes, do I need to explain this?

 

[RedFyn]

Humans aren't natural predators: we are an invasive species. Also natural predators aren't doing it for recreational reasons nor claiming it's a form of deliberate conservation. This ties in with what I stated previously, I think it is dishonest to try and justify recreational hunting is a form of deliberate conservation.

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Generally, the hunters are doing it for recreation and the ones allowing them to hunt are doing so for conservation. The hunting is ultimately controlled and directed by the conservationists which is why it's not dishonest to say that recreational hunting is a form of deliberate conservation. Your argument has no merit once you understand the underlying systems in place.

 

[Westbahnhof]

edit: Nevermind, too off topic

 

[TyrantII]

Humanity has removed almost all apex predators, so unfortunately it is a necessity. The money generated from licensing and tags is also is dumped back into conservation, and is unfortunately the major source of funding.

So untill several billionaires out aside their billions to fun conservation directly, there's not much recourse.

 

[Maneil99]

Generally, the hunters are doing it for recreation and the ones allowing them to hunt are doing so for conservation. The hunting is ultimately controlled and directed by the conservationists which is why it's not dishonest to say that recreational hunting is a form of deliberate conservation. Your argument has no merit once you understand the underlying systems in place.

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Trusting whats allowed by conservation policies is also not an instant win. See hibernating bear hunting, wolf culls that happened in yellowstone and all over the United states that screwed up these ecosystems in the first place. Ideally we seem farmland america die off as efficiency increases or population stabilizes and the need to keep fucking around lessons.



A natural remedy is often the best one when it comes to population control. We can shoot all the deer we want to fix OUR problems of crop destruction. Likely won't have the effects as that posted above

 

[ChippyTurtle]

The divorce between urban and suburban and rural can be clearly seen in the reactions to hunting and why personally I'm not particularly ready to allow population = power, and let cities and urban sentiments control policies over rural areas.

The fact people frequently protest culling of overpopulated species, don't realize the environmental impact of human activities, ignorance and acceptance of factory farming, yet a disturbing unease over using a gun to kill a animal (when it's the most humane method) is completely a argument against letting states be controlled wholly by population concentration.

Mostly the latter? The former is a more difficult question to answer. I don't think there is a strong correlation between the most popular animals to hunt for sport and the most invasive species. If they do happen to overlap in a particular reason it is most likely a coincidence.

Humans aren't natural predators: we are an invasive species. Also natural predators aren't doing it for recreational reasons nor claiming it's a form of deliberate conservation. This ties in with what I stated previously, I think it is dishonest to try and justify recreational hunting is a form of deliberate conservation.

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Nature is not some harmonious wonderland spoiled by humanity. We are a animal, a predator, one given the blessed gift to be able to potentially sustain the length of our species' survival with thinking and foresight (including the foresight to see how destroying other species and populations negatively affects us(can't remember the term), the term invasive species was made to define the movement of non-native creatures by human impact. Using it to contrast our actions as unnatural is foolish.

All life seeks to extend it's "bloodline". We got lucky enough to get blessed with a brain that's better than the rest. If for some reason the deer population was allowed to explode, deer don't have the collective foresight to not hit the living space wall and cause starvation and habitat collapse (in due time we may find ourselves on the same page sadly)

 

[RedFyn]

Yeah, I don't mean to argue that the ones in charge are always correct. It's not a simple thing but I don't think you can say that it isn't done with good intentions in most cases.

 

[ChippyTurtle]

Yikes, do I need to explain this?

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Please do, I'm happy to hear your thoughts.

 

[floridaguy954]

Humanity has removed almost all apex predators, so unfortunately it is a necessity. The money generated from licensing and tags is also is dumped back into conservation, and is unfortunately the major source of funding.

So untill several billionaires out aside their billions to fun conservation directly, there's not much recourse.

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This. Unfortunately, it all boils down to funding.

The divorce between urban and suburban and rural can be clearly seen in the reactions to hunting and why personally I'm not particularly ready to allow population = power, and let cities and urban sentiments control policies over rural areas.

The fact people frequently protest culling of overpopulated species, don't realize the environmental impact of human activities, ignorance and acceptance of factory farming, yet a disturbing unease over using a gun to kill a animal (when it's the most humane method) is completely a argument against letting states be controlled wholly by population concentration.



Nature is not some harmonious wonderland spoiled by humanity. We are a animal, a predator, one given the blessed gift to be able to potentially sustain the length of our species' survival with thinking and foresight (including the foresight to see how destroying other species and populations negatively affects us(can't remember the term), the term invasive species was made to define the movement of non-native creatures by human impact. Using it to contrast our actions as unnatural is foolish.

All life seeks to extend it's "bloodline". We got lucky enough to get blessed with a brain that's better than the rest. If for some reason the deer population was allowed to explode, deer don't have the collective foresight to not hit the living space wall and cause starvation and habitat collapse (in due time we may find ourselves on the same page sadly)

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It is both laughable and insulting that you mention that when the main reason we have been politically stifled for decades on many issues is because of gerrymandering and the rural vote.

 

[Murfield]

The divorce between urban and suburban and rural can be clearly seen in the reactions to hunting and why personally I'm not particularly ready to allow population = power, and let cities and urban sentiments control policies over rural areas.

The fact people frequently protest culling of overpopulated species, don't realize the environmental impact of human activities, ignorance and acceptance of factory farming, yet a disturbing unease over using a gun to kill a animal (when it's the most humane method) is completely a argument against letting states be controlled wholly by population concentration.



Nature is not some harmonious wonderland spoiled by humanity. We are a animal, a predator, one given the blessed gift to be able to potentially sustain the length of our species' survival with thinking and foresight (including the foresight to see how destroying other species and populations negatively affects us(can't remember the term), the term invasive species was made to define the movement of non-native creatures by human impact. Using it to contrast our actions as unnatural is foolish.

All life seeks to extend it's "bloodline". We got lucky enough to get blessed with a brain that's better than the rest. If for some reason the deer population was allowed to explode, deer don't have the collective foresight to not hit the living space wall and cause starvation and habitat collapse (in due time we may find ourselves on the same page sadly)

Click to shrink...

To imply that I am claiming that nature is a wonderland is hyperbole. However, there is plenty of evidence to show that the quantinary extinction events (the extinction of non-african megafauna) are linked with early human migration. Furthmore, it has be put forward that we live in the holocene extinction event, the 6th mass extinction event caused by humanity. I have provided a link in my first post. I think it is entirely fair to say that humans have very strongly and very adversely affected global extinction intensity.

Also to say we are a animal and a predator isn't exactly fair when talking about recreational hunting. Where the goal of the hunt is not based in survival.

Your point about invasive species doesnt really make sense to me, and I am not sure where you are going with it.

The fact that deer are favoured as an animal to hunt, has nothing to do with the "natural" sustainability of their population. It is entirely due to them being good sport. In some cases animals that are good sport align with animals that are invasion such as pike. However, pike are often introduced as an invasive species by recreational fishers into new bodies of water as they are good sport.

Also might does not mean right. We could have an entirely separate discussion on the morality of recreational hunting but this isn't what the thread is about.

Generally, the hunters are doing it for recreation and the ones allowing them to hunt are doing so for conservation. The hunting is ultimately controlled and directed by the conservationists which is why it's not dishonest to say that recreational hunting is a form of deliberate conservation. Your argument has no merit once you understand the underlying systems in place.

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You could explain why the underlying systems make recreational hunting a form of conservation, instead of telling me I don't understand them.

Not all animals are "huntable" or make for good sport. So its only the animals which hunters like to hunt that need population control? Can you show me the correlation between unstable population growth in different species and those preferred by recreational hunters?

 

[III-V]

I think this sort of hunting is fine. Still not my thing though.