The hunter as conservationist

Hunters are the world leaders in conservation. I like that aspect of being a hunter. Hunters, through their hunting license dollars, pay for most conservation.

Hunting organizations such as the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Ducks Unlimited and Pheasants Forever have conserved millions of acres of wildlife habitat. While those conservation efforts were primarily aimed at helping game species such as elk and ducks,  hundreds of other wildlife species benefit from these conservation efforts.

Nonhunters are sometimes perplexed why hunters who love wildlife would want to kill the wildlife they love. The reason is simple and at the same time complex. Humans, by necessity, have been hunting wild game for tens of thousands of years as a means to live and survive. Farming, the modern way to feed our society, has roots that go back only a couple of thousand years. So hunting is a natural instinct that persists in many of us. To have plentiful wildlife to hunt, modern hunters have learned to manage and enhance wildlife species.

Recently, Congress passed legislation to allow the continued hunting of three species of antelope that are going extinct in their native Africa. This is known as the Three Amigos legislation. The scimitar horned oryx, the Dama gazelle and addax are nearly extinct in their native lands of African due to unregulated subsistence hunting and land-use changes.

But many decades ago, long before these antelope became endangered in Africa, they were imported to Texas ranches. Those imported antelope populations thrived, providing new hunting opportunities for American hunters. This is similar to importing Chinese pheasants for sport hunting back in the late 1800s.

Now the only thriving populations of these African antelope are in Texas.

A few years ago, some well-intended but naïve animal rights advocates forced the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to include these Americanized antelope under the endangered species act, limiting hunting. Without the income provided by hunters, the Texas ranchers had no financial incentive to continue to have these non-native antelope species on their ranches. So the U.S. population of these antelope dropped drastically, making them truly endangered worldwide.

Recently, hunting organizations worked to pass federal legislation allowing the sport hunting of these introduced antelope. With financial incentives to continue raising these antelope through hunting revenues, the Texas ranch populations and worldwide populations of these antelope will expand.

In the future, when the original African home countries of these antelope matures, it is likely that breeding stock from the Texas populations of these antelope will be exported back to their native countries to rebuild native herds.

This is a fine example of the slogan, “Hunting is conservation.”