Just a few minutes ago I finished reading the article by Paul Watson, recently a National Board Member for the Sierra Club, enclosed below. It may cause hot debates, but this is the 'hot topics' category anyway. Let me say that I could not agree more with what he has to say:
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The Sierra Club Chooses Killers over Advocates for Life and Nature
By Paul Watson
Recently a National Board Member for the Sierra Club
My resignation from the Sierra Club received more letters of support for condemning hunting than criticisms and this was to be expected considering that more than 80% of Sierra Club members do not hunt.
Of the few who were critical of my anti-hunting position, they reportedly took offense to my remarks as being anti-hunting (of course they were) and they insisted that hunters were a strong conservation lobby and thus essential to protecting wildlife and wildlife habitats.
I probably should have been more definitive of my position. Instead of stating that I was anti-hunting or opposed to hunters, I should have said that I am anti-killing and opposed to killers.
The choice is really between endorsing the infliction of pain, suffering and death or opposing the infliction of pain, suffering and death.
Pro-killers will say that those people like me who are opposed to killing are alienated urbanities, of the privileged class, and insensitive to the traditional rationale that supports hunting.
That argument does not work with me because I was raised as the eldest of seven children by a single mother in a small fishing village in a rural area of Eastern Canada. My father was abusive and he was a hunter.
I have spent a large part of my life in third world nations and on the ocean. I oppose the killing of wildlife not because I am alienated from nature but because I happen to believe that you can't love or respect nature with a gun.
I walked the trap lines in the Eastern bush as a child. I walked them to free captive animals from leg hold traps and to destroy the traps. I destroyed hundreds of these vicious contraptions between the ages of 11 and 18.
I have seen the suffering. In Kenya I watched a mother elephant literally weep for the loss of her calf. In Michigan I witnessed a Canada goose sit for days without eating beside the body of its mate who had been shot and not recovered. In Alaska I saw a Grizzly cub sitting confused beside the skinned body of its mother who was killed only for her hide. In the Yukon, I followed a trail of blood for over a mile to discover an aerial gut-shot wolf staring at me in fear and bewilderment.
What I have observed in the wild is suffering. It was plainly evident and I felt remorse for the arrogance of our species for justifying the taking of lives for sport, for enjoyment, for fun, and for pleasure.
In Zimbabwe I spent time with big game hunters, some of whom reluctantly led rich trophy hunters into the bush because they had lost their jobs as rangers and President Mugabe had ruled that unless wildlife made money the animals would be eliminated. These hunters described most of their clients as slob hunters, arrogant and ignorant and expressed their shame at being forced to participate in the murder business.
I was amazed to discover that a Texan accountant had won a prize from the Boone and Crocket Club for bagging a trophy whitetail deer and then he was exposed when it was discovered that the rack of an animal stolen from a taxidermist in Alberta had been surgically grafted onto a smaller animal on a game farm in Mexico where they flushed it out from cover into the sights of the "great hunters" rifle.
It was John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club who first described
hunting as "the murder business."
In a few places in the world people hunt for survival. In the past, people were forced to hunt for survival. The constituency the Sierra Club is now courting through its killer outreach program are not people who have a need to hunt for survival.
They are people who spend more money on weaponry, travel and related
expenses than the value of the meat they obtain. It is not the meat they are after but the thrill of the kill.
Dick Cheney, when not shooting lawyers, describes how he loves to see the ducks tumble from the sky. I've heard hunters describe how pulling the trigger gives them an erection.
These are men who slaughter for pleasure. I call them perverse death
deviants and I have no apologies for labeling them as such. Killing for pleasure is a sickness, no different than child molestation or rape.
There is no sport in killing an animal from a distance with a sophisticated tool designed to inflict death. The name sportsman implies that there is a fair contest. There is nothing fair about being ripped apart by high powered bullets.
Hunters target the biggest, the strongest and the best of the species they pursue. This is behavior outside the laws of ecology. It is unnatural predation and certainly cannot be condoned by credible conservationists.
Hunters defend their perverse desire to extinguish life by saying it is traditional. Unfortunately many barbaric practices are traditional. However, modern day hunting bears little relation to so called traditional hunting. Hunters today are more akin to those who eradicated the bison and took only the tongues.
Hunters were responsible for the extinction of the Labrador duck, the
Passenger Pigeon, the Eastern Bison, the Plains Wolf and the extirpation of the Grizzly from most of the lower 48 states. They were not only killers they were involved in the act of specicide - the complete eradication of entire species. This was not conservation.
Hunters cite Theodore Roosevelt as a big game hunter who was also a
conservationist. This is true, he was both. He lived in a time when killing for pleasure was accepted but it was also a time when racism was accepted as normal and it was considered abnormal for women to have any rights, especially the right to vote. Roosevelt did set aside land to conserve much in the same way that the British aristocracy set aside land as exclusive hunting preserves to keep out the lower classes.
The Sierra Club is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to reach out to invite killers to join the Club. The leadership of the Club believes that the over 80% of Club members who don't take pleasure from killing must be tolerant of the less than 20% who do. They want to bring in more killers into the Club.
There is a big difference between hunting and killing. Photographers and film makers can hunt wildlife. It actually takes more skill to hunt a Mountain sheep with a camera than with a rifle. Any nimrod can pull a trigger and send a high velocity bullet unexpectedly into living tissue to shatter organs and induce shock. The photographer brings back nobility, a creature caught in its natural habitat in harmony with the world around it.
The killer watches his victim tumble from the air or crash to the ground as it chokes and gurgles on its own life blood. The photographer brings back life. The hunter brings back death.
I have been a hunter myself. I've never killed anything but I have stalked and hunted human poachers. I have destroyed their ships, their rifles, their nets, their longlines and their harpoons. I have snatched clubs from the bloody hands of sealers and defended myself from their attacks. My form of hunting is much fairer and gutsier than these killers who prey upon their unsuspecting and innocent victims. I target the guilty not the innocent.
Once I trekked with Kenyan rangers across the plains of Tsavo on the track of poachers. We followed their trail of elephant carcasses rotting on the ground with only their tusks removed. We found the criminals. They fired on us and killed one of our rangers. We did not kill them. We wounded two and arrested seven. They were armed with AK-47 rifles and our rangers were armed with British Enfield 303's. We were up against a superior foe and we beat them. It was not sport. It was not fun. It was dangerous and necessary work and the objective was to save lives, not to extinguish lives.
That is the only kind of hunting that makes sense today in a world with a human population approaching seven billion. If every American exercised their "right" to kill, the ducks, geese, quail, elk, deer and other creatures would disappear quite quickly. There are simply to many of us and not very many of them.
It can hardly be an egalitarian sport if only a minority of citizens can realistically participate. Instead of encouraging hunting, groups like the Sierra Club should be discouraging the number of hunters. The nation and the world needs fewer killers of wildlife - not more.
In Europe over a hundred million songbirds are gunned down every year. Elephant populations have been reduced by 70% in East Africa since I worked on poaching patrols there in 1978. World fisheries are in a state of collapse. Wildlife is getter scarcer and there is more need now than ever for protection.
Why can't we protect wetlands simply because wetlands need to be protected? Why is there this demand that killers are needed to help protect wetlands simply because they want to slaughter ducks? Canada geese mate for life. Shouldn't it bother us that we shatter tens of thousands of these relationships every year? Why should we tolerate the accumulation of lead and steel shot in the marshes and estuaries? Why should we tolerate the legal murder of human beings that we label as hunting accidents, especially when the victim is a non-killer, perhaps a child some nimrod has mistaken for a deer.
The son of Sigmund Freud was walking on his own property in Quebec when a hunter shot and killed him. The killer was found not guilty because the death was ruled an "accident".
When a stranger can kill you on your own land and get away with it, it demonstrates that our tolerance for this legal killing has gone over the top of acceptability.
One killer wrote me to say that my "radical anti-hunting" ideas were
unacceptable for a member of the Board of the Sierra Club. When did
opposition to killing, to the taking of life, to the extinguishment of a living creature, to the wasting of a sentient being become a radical idea?
Sometimes I think we live in such a bizarre world where advocates for life are considered radical and proponents of death are considered normal, where violence is considered acceptable and non-violence is dismissed as unpatriotic or cowardly.
Few killers question the morality of their actions. Once you have reached a stage where you can inflict cruelty and death, thoughts of morality, empathy and respect have long since vanished.
For if a killer of a deer could feel the pain and anguish of his victim or see the fawn starve because of a mother that did not return they would have little appetite for the meat.
Humans who have crossed the line into dealing death and inflicting misery have become alienated from the wonderment of life and no longer see or appreciate the magic of being alive.
Life is to be cherished, protected, defended and championed, not to be wantonly and cruelly destroyed, and certainly not for so frail an excuse as pleasure or sport.
This essay may be freely distrbuted and published.
Captain Paul Watson
Founder and President of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (1977-
Co-Founder - The Greenpeace Foundation (1972)
Co-Founder - Greenpeace International (1979)
Director of the Sierra Club USA (2003-2006)
Director - The Farley Mowat Institute
Director - www.harpseals.org
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Mr. Watson has obvious strong emotional opposition to hunting in general. While I strongly disagree with his catgorization of all hunters as "killers", I agree with him that the destruction of wildlife for purely human gain (or pleasure) is unacceptable. Where I fall most decidely on the other side of the fence is when hunting is used as a part of environmental conservation - the thinning of a wildlife population when there is no longer enough habitat to support it due to the power of procreation of both man and animal. Like it or not, since we homo sapiens have so drastically altered the balance of predators/prey on planet earth, we now need to take some responsibility for managing it all. Unfortunately, Mr. Watson's highly emotional, unobjective rant will no doubt polarize the debate even further.
"There are simply too many of us and not very many of them."
Bingo - the most objective statement made. Until the issue of human overpopulation is addressed, it will only get worse. And judging by the fossil record, you can bet your bippy it will be dealt with one way or the other.
- - - I thought that this was a PHOTOGRAPHY web site, and not a political soapbox for one group of zealots against another. That's what it will turn into if personal opinions about anything are allowed to take over.
What's next on the list? "Ban ant farms because they are exploitive entertainment?"
"Right-to-life for the Red Ant?"
"Termite food banks. Termites deserve to eat too!"
Who's personal cause gets cut off with them being told, that does not rate space on this PHOTO site?
Where is the line between what groups deserve survival help, and what groups can be ignored?
And is that what this site is for?
- - - I sure hope that a good photo site does not turn into yet another outlet for endless personal frustrations.
It is unfortunate that such black and white lines need to be drawn, and with such vitriol.
I am a "killer" myself, as are many of my friends. I don't believe that we fit the description of Mr. Watson, but that does not seem to be open for debate.
Neither I nor any of my friends kill mammals for "sport"; we have seen the effects and found them to be too emotionally painful to continue (cold comfort for the mammals I suppose).
Ironically we all have worked for a good part of our life to conserve and rescue wildlife. Myself with fish, others with amphibians and reptiles, still more with a variety of mammals, all of us with birds.
These diatribes are tiring. They do little, in the end, to solve the problems we face as a society and instead build fences, silence debates, and turn people against one another.
Hopefully we can find a way for "killers" and "anti-killers" to work together.
Paul, this forum was expressly created as a separate venue from other NPN areas so that those who are offended by such discussion can choose to avoid it. The guidelines are pretty clear:
"This forum is intended for the discussion of environmental issues, habitat conservation and photography ethics."
It would be interesting to conduct a poll to see how many of the members here are urban as opposed to rural based nature photographers. I have seen statements and photographs here which display a great ignorance, to the point of dangerous, about nature. By way of example, someone had posted a photograph of a grizzly and cub feeding on a carcass some time ago. Going near any bear, let alone a grizzly, which is on a meat feed is about as dangerous as it gets.
I am not a hunter though I have no objection to those who do hunt provided they utilize the animal they kill. I have no sympathy for those who sport hunt, kill a bear simply for a gall bladder or a caribou for the alleged aphrodisiac quality of the horns. It is disgusting to come across the body of a deer or moose that was shot purely for pleasure.
Arthur's post of Watson's comments, whether we agree with them or not, is in my opinion appropriate. As nature photographers we should be concerned with nature before photography or else turn our lens to fashion photography.
While I don't agree with all Watson has to say, neither do I reject his observations out of hand. If we are to be knowledgeable about nature, the hot topics forum does provide the opportunity to reflect on the opinions of others. It is as important to learn others opinions regarding nature as it is the latest camera firmware upgrade. Perhaps more so.
- - - I actually do not know what forums a post is on as I always pick the "All Topics" link.
I just thought it made more sence to get every recent post instead of just ones in one small subject area.
I keep forgetting that a lot of people don't even know about that feature and others just stick to 1 or 2 forums.
I have seen statements and photographs here which display a great ignorance, to the point of dangerous, about nature. By way of example, someone had posted a photograph of a grizzly and cub feeding on a carcass some time ago. Going near any bear, let alone a grizzly, which is on a meat feed is about as dangerous as it gets.
hey Dave,
Wow - what an irony this is. Speaking of ignorant statements, what do you know about the situation you're talking about? Were you there? Did you even ask anyone (such as the photographer: I presume you're talking about me) about the situation? Perhaps if you bothered to do so, you wouldn't make such accusatory statements about a specific situation you know nothing about.
That was quite an article but I'm afraid I sit on the fence of it also. Spending a few months in Africa, I also witnessed some heartbreaking situations of animals being killed for specific parts (a young rhino poached for his horn) etc. However, I also got to witness the enthusiasm of some Kenyan tribal members talk about a hunt & the feast they would have, etc etc.
I think the objective should be on the type of person doing the hunting, not in the sport itself. I am a lover of nature first, a nature photographer second but am also a hunter, a fisher, and a wood cutter. Would this make me a conservationists enemy? Probably to some extremes. I love the taste of a fresh caught trout over an outdoor campfire. I love the crackle of my woodstove in the winter & and I enjoy wild game for a meal.
Personally, I have only ever hunt grouse & probably do not have the emotional capabilities to hunt a deer or a moose. They are beautiful creatures, but also one of the best meats I've ever tasted. So am I opposed to it? No! But I also firmy believe in hunting/gun education & licensing. I am totally against poaching & the fact that there are many untrained & uneducated hunters out there.
So while I find some parts of the article EXTREME, other parts about poaching for animal parts, I couldn't agree with more!
Which part of the statement do you find objectionable? The fact that bears on a meat feed are very dangerous?
You can't outrun a bear, a telephoto might not help. They are very strong, I've seen dumpsters made of quarter inch steel torn apart by grizzlies on the hunt for food. Recently in Peace River AB a brown bear broke down the doors of a supermarket to dine, so being in a vehicle might not help.
I'm not here to argue with you, how you choose to life your life is your affair, if in fact it was your photo!. However that being said it is irresponsible to post such a photo, in my opinion, without making people aware of the dangers. For those not familiar with bears, thinking they can approach a feeding bear, might just see them joining Mr. Treadwell, the late 'Grizzly Man'.
To my understanding we have had three deaths by bears so far this year in Canada. The most recent being in the Yukon by a grizzly. And the bears are just only out of their dens. Right now I won't go into the bush alone even with bear spray and whistles. The young males are staking out their territory and unpredictable. That isn't fear, it's respect.
I was a hunter (not a killer), as well as a strong advocate for conservation and protection of habitat, for quite a while. I have seen a great many species of non-game animals benefit from the billions of dollars sport hunters pour into the conservation till. Of course they do it for somewhat selfish reasons and sometimes without knowing it but they provide more financial support to the preservation of habitat than all the non-hunting organizations combined. I was always a safe, ethical and serious hunter but I too have witnessed the slobs at work. They made me sick then and they still do today. Poaching is not hunting. And hunters can, and do, have a deep love and respect for the very game they hunt.
When I used to hunt I also encountered persons like Mr. Watson who, through ignorance, made bold, sweeping and usually incorrect statements about hunters and hunting in general. They usually belong to the "other" group of people. By that I mean they are not part of the group who believe we all have the right to persue our own type of recreation and sport, within legal and ethical limits. They are not part of the group that says "I may not agree with what you do or how you do it, but you have the right and freedom to do it and I have the right and freedom not to and there's room for both of us so long as we don't harm each other". No, they usually belong to the group that thinks they are the gifted and brilliant chosen few and all should be as they are...and if you aren't then you are somehow less of a person and the bane of humanity.
I don't hunt any more, mostly due to age and lack of will power required to seek your quarry in the proper manner. I shoot with my camera now but I have found it much easier to "bag a trophy" with the camera than it ever was with a firearm.
Last, but not least, I have NEVER broken the law to further my cause. This can't be said of Mr. Watson. He readily admits to destruction of property, legally owned and used by others, simply because he disagreed with their intended use. Thank God we don't all do that! It would lead to anarchy. Sounds to me like he would be better suited to the Board of Pardons and Parole than the Board of Directors of the Sierra Club.
Thanks for getting back and some further input. If the photo you're referring to was one like this one then yeah, it's possibly mine. I wish I had the Alaska Magazine edition with me where Nick Jans wrote about that kill and the experience there. I don't remember it verbatim, but he kinda likened it to a circus or a zoo setting with the number of people around. What made it so special is that the wolves couldn't have killed that bull in a better and safer place for photographers. It was right off the road, but down in the river floor, with a ridiculously steep scree slope between the road and the kill. You might think I'm irresponsible or dangerous or whatever, but there were at least 4 Park Service Rangers standing beside me and they all felt it was OK. One of the Park Rangers even allowed me to get off the bus to shoot.
Was it irresponsible of me to post that without a bunch of information telling people how dangerous bears can be? You might think so, I disagree with that. Where would that end? Landscape photographers posting little notes about how dangerous mountains are? Rivers? The desert can be a dangerous place too. So can slot canyons. So can jungles. So can cities. Bull elk in the rut are dangerous creatures, but I see countless elk images posted on sites such as this. Do you call those photographers irresponsible? Moose can kill people very easily, but I don't feel anyone posting a moose image needs to "make people aware of the dangers" when they post a moose image on a nature photography site.
Of course bears on a kill are dangerous. What I find objectionable in your first post above is the implication that my post was dangerously ignorant (or ignorantly dangerous). Had you chosen to gather some information about the specific situation you're talking about, I think you'd feel very differently about it. To imply that my posting (and possibly my actions) were ignorant when you had no knowledge of the specific situation is, IMO, unwarranted and unreasonable.
Ya know what's ironic? I have been charged by a grizzly. by several different grizzlies. One big ole boar came within about 25 yards of me. Once I was by myself, once I was with one other person and once I was with 4 other people. And each time that happened I was doing everything "by the book", wasn't intruding on the bears, and being as safe and respectful as I know how. The problem is bears don't always read books. What caused those situations? In reality, just being in bear country. The only reason those situations didn't end differently is because the bears made the decisions they did. And I'm glad for the way it worked out. Personally, I find glacial travel and river crossings to be far more dangerous than bears, but they don't garner quite the same glory, do they?
No, that wasn't the shot I had in mind, nice capture though. While I do see the point you are making, I still tend to disagree with you.
There is a book by a Canadian photographer of some excellent shots of polar bears, the most dangerous of all bears. Throughout the book the photographer goes to great lengths to say don't do this at home kids. He talks of the electric fencing he uses, various approaches he uses to take photos while emphasizing it is dangerous to do what he is doing.
While Watson doesn't touch on the subject, unfortunately, particularly among urban people, there is a tendency among some conservationists, to imply animals are our friends as though we could drop in on a Friday night and have a beer with them.
When I lived in Ontario I did quite a bit of tourism\nature photography. This would be a very long post if I were to regal you with the absolutely crazy things people did. Not so much out of stupidity as sheer ignorance. Going in without a first aid kit, keeping fresh caught fish in the tent, not taking extra food in case you were stranded by weather.
If you will indulge me with another storey from years ago when I was an assistant. We were doing a commercial shoot in Haliburtan Ontario, a place with a very healthy black bear population. It was the whole nine yards, models, client, art director and the fancy picnic lunch. It was about a mile walk in from the location to the vehicles. When returning from the shoot in the dark, the head of studio gave me the dickens for shuffling my feet. When I explained I was doing this to let bears know of our approach, it came as complete surprise to all these urban people that bears did in fact, live in the woods.
When you explain the shot you took, it is a very controlled situation. My concern is that somebody seeing such a photograph might think they can approach a bear with impunity. You mention falling off a cliff, people know about gravity. It is a calculated risk.
As you mention, you can't post a sticker on every photograph saying this is a dangerous activity. Again the concern may be because of the venue, many here are urban based photographers. While not wanting to imply they are stupid, rather some do express in postings things they have done that reveal an ignorance of just how dangerous the bush can be. My concern, and I hope you appreciate it, is in this venue we have many talented photographers who, seeing a picture of a bear feeding, might feel they can safely approach a bear, without the controlled environment you had.
My current location is on the edge of grizzly country and a great many black bears which are not as human habituated as I know in the south. When I first got here I took a course with the local bear expert to better understand the local situation. It was a surprise to me when he stated if you meet a bear on the trail never take its picture. His reasoning is that bears have poor sight and might interpret the raising of a camera as a threat. He has over thirty years experience as a bear guide, I'll believe him.
While others may disagree with me, I'm of the opinion part of what people should be doing is not just offering photographic details, but when the situation warrants it, 'environmental' information. I don't want to present myself as a bush expert, I'm not. Nor do I wish to be perceived as one of those individuals that feels everything needs a warning label.
To my mind, one of the great things about NPN is that there is a diverse base of photographers from around the world who can and will share their experience in shooting in various locations, including the pitfalls. To share experience with nature, good or bad, is important as sharing technical photographic information. They combine to make the better shot.
I'm off topic somewhat and rambling a bit, so I hope the moderators bear with me and that you do see the point I'm trying to make. It is about educating our fellows from our individual experiences, not alarming.
I need to hear the word "vegetarian" before engaging in an anti-hunting debate. Personally, I don't think I've killed an elephant in at least a year.......
Anyway, the points you've raised here are no longer specific to the image, so that doesn't matter too much.
Honestly, I don't agree that anyone posting here has any responsibility to warn the viewer of any potential dangers in taking similar shots. I certainly don't feel the need to warn nature photographers that approaching a feeding grizzly sow with cubs is dangerous. Now, if I''m going into the field with someone, anyone, I do make very clear the way I feel bear encounters need to be dealt with. I go out of my way with every person I enter the field with about bear habitat, bear behavior, and how human behavior can influence that. I have every individual read a pamphlet from the NPS about bears, and I try to cover as much information about how we need to conduct ourselves in bear country. I do similar talks about moose, wolves, river crossings, storms, glaciers and scree slopes, even other people we might encounter.
You said people know about gravity and that being around mountains is calculated risk. Well so, in reality, is walking in bear country. We do what we can to lower that risk, but ultimately it's up to the bear what happens.
A great example might be bison. Bison images are posted frequently, but I don't think anyone posting those images is obliged to offer the aside that "by the way folks, bison can and will kill you, easily". If they do offer that information, well, great. But I don't think that not doing so is 'wrong'. I'm not responsible for the actions of someone who views my images.
I agree that sharing information is great, be it technical, geographic, field experiences, whatever. But I think making a claim that those who don't are being irresponsible or dangerously ignorant isn't reasonable either. One could make similar claims that folks who post images of trees should add a note about the damage logging and the timber industry is causing - many (I'd say most) people have no idea. One could say it's irresponsible for someone to post an image of the Rockies or the desert without an accompanying diatribe about the damage the beef industry and welfare ranching on public lands does to those natural habitats. Guy Tal just wrote an article about the rights of artists to present their work without accompanying labels that are a function of other's prejudices (I don't entirely agree with his viewpoint, ironically enough, but it's a good read :) )
I think on this matter we are going to finish by agreeing to disagree. My main concern at the moment is other wildlife. There is still snow on the ground, ice on the rivers and lakes and we have mosquitoes already. The size of quarters!
Mike Maples's stament - "we all have the right to persue our own type of recreation and sport". I basically agree with this. Everybody can choose what he likes best, and what he enjoys (withing some limits - if somebody "likes" racing through populated areas with 150 mph in his car, well I guess it's obvious...). But there is a problem with the "right" to hunt, in my opinion. There can not be a right for everybody to hunt - there are simply too many people and too few animals on the planet. If everybody (I mean everybody) made use of his right - if it existed - earth would be devoid of animals very quickly.
This does NOT mean that I'm opposed to hunting altogether. I know people who hunt, and they are great people and love nature. I simply say that there is no untouchable right granted to do so for everybody...
Hope what I write can be understood - I'm not a native speaker and expressing things very precisely in English is difficult for me.
Basil
Posted by Fred Stearns on May 13, 2006 at 12:59 PM
Hunting? Like many others on this forum, I go hunting any time I want and any where I want. Well, there are restrictions like provate property and such. But I can "shoot" the same animal many times and now that the same animal will be waiting for me when I return. I simply use my trusty camera to "shoot" the animals with.
Posted by Kiliii Yu on November 10, 2006 at 5:29 AM
Hello everyone, I thought it would be nice to have an indigenous perspective here on this board.
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Being of indigenous ancestry and a practicing gatherer-hunter, I have lived with my life staked closely to the health of the land. Today I run a school (www.dancinghawk.com) that mentors people in the old way of seeing, the old way of living, and the old way of relating to each other.
In Maantsu, 'to hunt' means to walk with a bow. It is a meditation, and it is a practice. We hunt because it is the way it has always been done, and it is the way to feed our people. When we stop doing the things our ancestors did, we often do not see the 200 year consequences of our actions. When we stop hunting, we stop relating to our brothers and sisters, the deer and the elderberries. There is a very simple connection that every native person who has kept her culture understands-- for anything to live, something else must die.
In today's culture, we carry with us a very distinct bias against death. We are afraid of losing our lives. We are afraid of losing the last redwood, we are afraid of those who would take another's life. But without a deep connection to death, it is impossible to understand life and the greater cycles that take place in ecosystems. Today the environmental movement is finally beginning to understand that when Europeans arrived in the New World, they did not walk upon a pristine 'nature', always balanced and ready to give. The Europeans walked into a forest that had been tended through native permaculture to be a veritable garden of eden. Indigenous peoples set fire to the oak savannahs to keep them open for deer browsing and acorns in California. Camas (blue-flowered) meadows were so large in the Willamette Valley that Meriwether Lewis believed them to be the ocean, and they were weeded of death camas.
For us to reconnect with the land, we must be involved with it. We make live with it, not outside of it. We cannot simply set it aside in preserves. We are a part of this great landscape, and the stories tell us that we have always been, and that we have always taken care of it. Today anthropology concurs that without indigenous involvement, many forest ecosystems are turning into deserts.
What does this mean? It means that if we are to make this earth a place where our children's children's children can live and play, we must be in it again. We can start small, by picking dandelions off the lawn to make wine.
'To hunt' means to take any life, including the life of tiger lilies, and basalt boulders. So we hunt cedars to make baskets and kayak frames. We hunt salmon to feed ourselves. We hunt deer with the red-osier dogwood arrows that they have been browsing.
Today the population is quite expansive. Nevertheless, despite our intuitive notions of overpopulation-- think of this-- Vancouver, BC used to support a native population of 3 million peoples who lived sustainably. That same area harvested the same number of salmon a thousand years ago as we do today commercially. How we do it, and our relationship to the fish and the sea and the river is very different. They kept 300 million fish returning to the Columbia River for several thousand years. In less than two hundred, we have reduced the Columbia salmon to less than 3 million, 90% of them hatchery fish.
In return for hunting a creature, it is the old way to offer it respect. With my students today, we have a First Salmon Ceremony where we return the spine of the first salmon to the river. Every fish we take is a gift, and we have incurred a debt which can only be repaid with respect and humility. All of my students take this attitude home with them, but not because the instructors beat them over the head with words. It is the experience of holding a fish out of the river with their bare hands and taking its life by hitting it on the head with a rock while slitting its gills that helps them understand. Experience is a great teacher, and combined with a strong cultural base, is the foundation for a healthy relationship with our siblings such as the Salmon People.
My students are both city-dwellers and rural folk. They range in age from 17 to 65. They are men and women. A few are native, many are white. Every one of them is sick of the violence that our culture passes onto each human being, and each living thing. By the time they leave our variably two week to five month residential programs, they are less angry, more joyful, more diplomatic, more radical, and more fun to be around (if I can make that judgement!) They have learned to get at least part of their food directly from the land, and how to give back more than they take.
You know, go back a few thousand years, and every single one of us has gatherer-hunter culture. We once knew how to live sustainably. There are some among us who have not forgotten. Their stories are still with us, and if you listen closely to the land, you can hear it telling us new ones. Every time I do something awkward, like peel a strip of bark that is too large, killing a shrub by accident, or getting sick by eating a piece of food that is spoilt (without using a refrigerator), I can hear the land speaking. Those lessons are awkward and hard to learn. Our elders are mostly gone. I feel compelled to build new stories of the land, build new relationships with all its inhabitants, including people.
I hope that I will one day have experience and stories enough to be an elder to my own grandchildren.
-Kiliii Yu, Dancing Hawk Native Lifeways
(Thanks for reading everyone! It is very late, so I apologize for any lack of articulation!)
Posted by Robert Fisher on November 10, 2006 at 1:35 PM
Kiliii, that was more than articulate, that was a thing of beauty. Your words are well written to be sure. And thank you for your perspective.
To go back to the original letter that was pasted, one only has to read a few paragraphs in to realise what's at issue. The guy had an abusive father who was also a hunter. He has connected the two and as a result, no one who hunts can be anything but abusive, reckless, anti-conservation, anti-nature. As a result of his psychological issue he's spent his life an radical forms of conservation and preservation and in support of groups that routinely break laws in an attempt to further their objectives. His is not a rational and reasoned thought process. The rest of his rant can be ignored on that basis.
Kiliii, it was a joy to read your post. However, I am not entirely certain how it relates to the article that I quoted in the beginning.
There is hunting and then there is hunting. Traditional ways of hunting that are sustainable as well as necessary to stay alive (and that include a clear respect for the hunted party as you say) are completely different from the hunting for fun and trophies. It is this last group of hunters that are the direct target of Watson (though I agree he is too 'black and white' in his letter), especially those that do not care about sustainability, do not have much respect for the animals they kill and do not feel themselves to be a part of the natural world.
I think that that 'modern' way of hunting is not necessary and indeed often harmful. At least it seems completely different from the kind of hunting you talk about.
Posted by Kiliii Yu on November 10, 2006 at 5:38 PM
Thanks for your kind words.
Arthur, I think you're right, I didn't bring it back to the original post closely enough, which I had meant to do!
I think my take on hunting today is that hunting is in itself inherently a sort of prayer to the land. I see even those who hunt with a rifle as intimately more connected to the land than those who never venture into the woods for days at a time. However, our culture today has created a 'resource-extraction' perspective, and when combined with hunting, is a terrible thing to behold, and be around. I would say, let's not stop hunting and trapping, but encourage people to get closer. Let's lay down the rifle, pick up a bow, or even a twenty two. Then a hunter simply must get close, and must understand how the raccoon lives, before anything were to happen.
Today in our specialist society, even hunters are too specialized. If hunters also had to learn to gather, and learned to actually _depend_ on the world around them for at least part of their sustenance, then a new culture of generalism would develop. That would be the first step to reacquiring our indigenous eyes, in my reckoning.
Using laws to ban hunting and trapping (or anything, for that matter) is the only way a state-level society can maintain its order. If we want to have flexible guidelines that are handed down by culture, we will have to relearn community and localize. Smaller villages. Familial relations. Not so long ago, the censure of the community was akin to a death sentence, but forgiveness was always around the corner. In a culture of villages and communities, a hunter that shot and killed wantonly would be thrown out! Today that means nothing, but imagine if all your friends and family suddenly refused to speak with you, and every grocery store refused to let you in! Fortunately, those traditional cultures typically let people make mistakes, and a village-wide censure might only last two weeks.
It's so different than law, isn't it?
When people talk about political fixes, I recognize a duty to support what decent legislation I can, but also not to have much faith in it fixing things in the 7 generations ahead. For that, I look towards real, life-changing experiences in those who I live around.
So I guess I certainly do support the Sierra club's efforts, but also Greenpeace, and also the Earth Liberation Front. I also support other indigenous people's efforts. I certainly wouldn't support legislation making hunting more difficult. I believe that attitudes and cultures must change, not the letter of the law.
Of course for me it starts with my own life. The changes I want to see have to exist my own life. I want to live by example, and mentor through inspiration, story and experience. Each one of us can do this, and make the changes we want, but it's not an easy task.
Many times when I look at my car and then look at my bike, I think of the seven generations ahead of us. I also think of my brothers the Warani, whose homeland has been literally ripped apart by oil companies. When I check my email, I think about how Google is moving into the Dalles to get cheap power for its 6-football-field buildings and servers. I think about how the Dalles Dam flooded and swallowed up the most important native fishing location in North America, Celilo Falls. I think about the salmon that run their heads into concrete trying to do the dance they've always done.
When I think of these things, I remember that each turn of my car key, each keystroke on my computer, must absolutely be towards real, authentic change in the world. And then I get rid of one more dependency on this great violent culture in trade for making-it-myself. Five years ago, I learned how to stop buying meat at the store, and how to hunt and butcher and prepare a deer, which when all its parts are used, can feed me for an entire winter. Two years ago I learned to ride my bike in the rain, and how to plan my travels to avoid motorized vehicular travel. What will it be tomorrow? Each day, another step towards the joy of living more simply and enjoying more community and more sanity.
As a photographer, every single piece of my equipment is used or salvaged. It doesn't keep me from making good pictures, or documenting things that I consider important. But once again, whenever I click the shutter, I try to remember that somewhere, somebody else pays the price for my privelege.
Thanks for reading, friends.
Posted by Robert Fisher on November 10, 2006 at 5:54 PM
I'm sorry Arthur but the only reference in that piece you quoted to the idea of hunting being acceptable is a single sentence that talks about there being 'a few places in the world where people hunt for survival' and that not being the constituency he is going after.
There are people who don't hunt for survival who are not the dangerous, anti-nature, anti-animal, monsters Watson portrays them to be. There are people who hunt annually, but not for survival, and who then eat the meat of the animals they kill. There is, or should be, nothing wrong with that form of hunting but clearly, Watson is against it. I think many would agree that sport hunting is not a desirable practice but Watson is not restricting his comments to sport hunting.
If he feels so strongly about the murdering of animals I certainly hope that he is a vegan, or at the very least a vegetarian because if he eats meat then he condones the slaughter of animals to fill his table and is a hypocrite because he thinks it's alright for abattoirs to do the killing, just as long as it's not done where he has to see it or know about it. Similarly if he owns any products made of leather or a down pillow or comforter for his bed.
Why is he not trying to change the economic situation of some of these African countries so that people don't have to resort to operating or working in game safaris to make a living? He cites the nature or wildlife photographer as a noble person. Such a broad generality cannot be supported. Yes, there are photographers who do their best not to harm the environment they work in, but there are others who don't give a damn and will bait animals, walk in sensitive areas and otherwise upset the balance of the local ecosystem just to get a photograph. The ignorance his comments displays only serves to confirm the lack of reason and rational thought that went into the comments.
Posted by Robert Fisher on November 10, 2006 at 5:58 PM
I'm sorry Arthur but the only reference in that piece you quoted to the idea of hunting being acceptable is a single sentence that talks about there being 'a few places in the world where people hunt for survival' and that not being the constituency he is going after.
There are people who don't hunt for survival who are not the dangerous, anti-nature, anti-animal, monsters Watson portrays them to be. There are people who hunt annually, but not for survival, and who then eat the meat of the animals they kill. There is, or should be, nothing wrong with that form of hunting but clearly, Watson is against it. I think many would agree that sport hunting is not a desirable practice but Watson is not restricting his comments to sport hunting.
If he feels so strongly about the murdering of animals I certainly hope that he is a vegan, or at the very least a vegetarian because if he eats meat then he condones the slaughter of animals to fill his table and is a hypocrite because he thinks it's alright for abattoirs to do the killing, just as long as it's not done where he has to see it or know about it. Similarly if he owns any products made of leather or a down pillow or comforter for his bed.
Why is he not trying to change the economic situation of some of these African countries so that people don't have to resort to operating or working in game safaris to make a living? He cites the nature or wildlife photographer as a noble person. Such a broad generality cannot be supported. Yes, there are photographers who do their best not to harm the environment they work in, but there are others who don't give a damn and will bait animals, walk in sensitive areas and otherwise upset the balance of the local ecosystem just to get a photograph. The ignorance his comments displays only serves to confirm the lack of reason and rational thought that went into the comments.
BTW, took a look at your Project Canada website. Nice. It's interesting that someone from outside Canada is working as hard as you are to preserve the beauty inside Canada. I used to live in Calgary and loved the mountains. Sadly I haven't been back much since I moved back to Ontario. I like the Mamiya too. I had a C220 for a time before I got my RZ.
Posted by writepic on November 23, 2006 at 5:47 PM
if it wasn't for the fact that watson is doing a lot to protect our shark populations right now i'd be tempted to write his ratings of as those of a madman. the anti hunt brigade are typically extreme and only go for the non attainable extreme.
however, the fact is, things are terribly complicated and many of the posts so far have been from typically western ideals.
i've been living and working in south america for the last three years, and whilst i appreciate the wise and beautiful words of kiliii, they are somewhat only relevant from a western society viewpoint. much of western society has arrived at the rich land of utopia, with it's big cars, big houses and breast implanted neowomen, and found that it is not all it's cracked up to be.
people like kiliii quite rightly offer hope to an already aware and educated population. the west is in a position of knowledge and can attempt to stear the developing world into a brighter future.
however, the developing world is much like a growing child. it does not want to hear that ice cream makes you fat, or that cigarretes only addict you to cancer, that petrochemical development destroys environments, the growing child only wants to try, to suck it and see.
the sad and simple fact is, killing animals is very big business in the third world. it's linked to big big organisations, to governments, to mafia, to drugs cartels. if you thing photographing bears is dangerous, try being a conservationist in the third world.
the sad and inevitable part is that the guy caught in the middle is the indigenous father. he has children who the west tells him can have a bright future, and the drugs baron is behind him all the way, ready to push him into never never land with a false passport in a stolen car, if he will just go and catch one more shark/bear/rhino/elephant or whatever might be a ready natural resource.
we can all wave our wands and wish extremists would go away, or get a plot, or something, but in a lot of the world, the only way is extreme. shark finning was banned here in 1994, but does it still go on? sure it does, and the police and the navy are the biggest financiers. if there wasn't some crazy guy going around sinking boats or assinating poachers, believe me there would really be no one doing much good.
am i a vegitarian? no. am i a puritanical pansy? no. i used to go hunting and watch a pack of hounds hunt foxes. i fully know what kiliii means when he says that to hunt you have to fully know the quarry. it is a means of conservation. i saw the hypocracy of a government ban on that when they spouted on about animal pain and their rights against that, whilst they ignored wounded and dying pheasants and ducks.
believe it when i say it, because i see it first hand, day in day out, the situation in many parts of the world is critical. legislation is very very ineffective in a corrupt society. what are you doing about it?
my 2 cents worth.
m
Posted by Robert Fisher on November 26, 2006 at 8:48 PM
Let me see if I can get this straight, writepic. You'd be opposed to Watson's comments and/or actions except for the fact that he's currently working in support of a cause that you happen to support. You rail against exploitation of sharks and apparently against the exploitation of animals in developing countries yet a quick tour of your website makes no indication that you are doing anything about the problem except talking about it and posting links to organisations which may be doing something about it. You used the word hypocrisy in your remarks. Seems you may have been referring to the wrong people; however.
Posted by writepic on November 27, 2006 at 11:13 AM
mr fisher, if you took time to follow all the links, you might arrive at the projects page of eyemocean.com and see that i am currently engaged in such a project and am nearly bankrupting my self in doing so. if you would like to make a dontation, please do so, if you are currently engaged in likewise activities, please consider yourself exempt, if you are just another empty headed armchair e-critic, please pass go, do not collect £200, and consider your pathetic attempt at worthwile debate wholly ignored.
m
Posted by Robert Fisher on November 27, 2006 at 8:36 PM
Didn't follow any of the links off your website. I retract me previous comments.
And yes, I am engaged in a similar project although not wildlife related. I am working on a project to photograph and document all of the remaining lighthouses in Canada. When I have a sufficient number that are of sufficient quality I'll be launching a website for the project to promote it. I've also had preliminary discussions with a publisher about a series of books for the project, with all my proceeds going to local preservation and restoration groups. Thus far, I've expended a not insignificant sum for film, processing and travel with much, much more to go. I am not asking for donations, nor will any revenues generated from print sales or lighthouse calendars or similar items sold off the website or through any other channels be kept by me. It will all be turned back to the local groups. I've been working on the project for about 18 months and am out of pocket about $8 to $9k so far.
Posted by writepic on November 27, 2006 at 10:24 PM
good luck with your project. i hope it goes well for the lighthouses, i come from near that world famous postcard one on the isle of wight. let me know when the books come out, sounds interesting.
Off topic, but Robert, your work is commendable. I live in Montreal, and there is a pamphlet distributed by Info-Touristique (or Sepaq inside Info-Touristique) that gives you the exact location of each and every functional lighthouse in Quebec. There are also a few dis-functional lighthouses in Quebec, one of them bang in Montreal itself.
Write me an email if you desire - I could mail you the pamphlet if you're interested.
Posted by David Senesac on November 29, 2006 at 4:56 PM
There are two basic issues from the Paul Watson essay on hunting. The one almost every responder on this thread addressed is the old one about hunting and killing animals while the more pertinent one to his essay is whether someone as a national board member of the Sierra Club ought to be pushing an anti hunting agenda in such a broadly based organization. A decade or so ago a similar situation occurred when some tried to push the club to adopt anti growth and population policy. In that case such a policy grated against corporations, industry, and many Democratic Party interests so was considered too devisive since some of those interests were major supporters to the club. Others including myself thought excessive growth and population issues were too central to the traditional goals of the club to ignore them. I like many others ended membership support though I still view much of what they do as positive. One could certainly make an argument that wildlife and hunting are concerns of traditional goals of the club. And also that a large percentage of club member would have some sympathies to controlling hunting more. Part of the problem with doing so is where to draw the line. So the club might have told Watson fine we'll consider some policy for instance against big game trophy sport hunting, but given the tone of the essay I'd expect his interest was in moving that line in the sand too far from what would be acceptable to most people in our society. Of course there is a considerable scope of viewpoints on hunting with those in the extremes of either end not likely to generate much sympathy from the majority of people.
A couple decades ago my philosophy professor assigned me a term paper on "Hunting is Wrong". The essense of my paper was that the simple question is far too vague and even if posed in a more focused manner that most of society would tend to frame the question with, it would all depend on circumstances and that many exceptions can be given for any of the general situations. ...David
Discussion
34 replies_________________________
The Sierra Club Chooses Killers over Advocates for Life and Nature
By Paul Watson
Recently a National Board Member for the Sierra Club
My resignation from the Sierra Club received more letters of support for condemning hunting than criticisms and this was to be expected considering that more than 80% of Sierra Club members do not hunt.
Of the few who were critical of my anti-hunting position, they reportedly took offense to my remarks as being anti-hunting (of course they were) and they insisted that hunters were a strong conservation lobby and thus essential to protecting wildlife and wildlife habitats.
I probably should have been more definitive of my position. Instead of stating that I was anti-hunting or opposed to hunters, I should have said that I am anti-killing and opposed to killers.
The choice is really between endorsing the infliction of pain, suffering and death or opposing the infliction of pain, suffering and death.
Pro-killers will say that those people like me who are opposed to killing are alienated urbanities, of the privileged class, and insensitive to the traditional rationale that supports hunting.
That argument does not work with me because I was raised as the eldest of seven children by a single mother in a small fishing village in a rural area of Eastern Canada. My father was abusive and he was a hunter.
I have spent a large part of my life in third world nations and on the ocean. I oppose the killing of wildlife not because I am alienated from nature but because I happen to believe that you can't love or respect nature with a gun.
I walked the trap lines in the Eastern bush as a child. I walked them to free captive animals from leg hold traps and to destroy the traps. I destroyed hundreds of these vicious contraptions between the ages of 11 and 18.
I have seen the suffering. In Kenya I watched a mother elephant literally weep for the loss of her calf. In Michigan I witnessed a Canada goose sit for days without eating beside the body of its mate who had been shot and not recovered. In Alaska I saw a Grizzly cub sitting confused beside the skinned body of its mother who was killed only for her hide. In the Yukon, I followed a trail of blood for over a mile to discover an aerial gut-shot wolf staring at me in fear and bewilderment.
What I have observed in the wild is suffering. It was plainly evident and I felt remorse for the arrogance of our species for justifying the taking of lives for sport, for enjoyment, for fun, and for pleasure.
In Zimbabwe I spent time with big game hunters, some of whom reluctantly led rich trophy hunters into the bush because they had lost their jobs as rangers and President Mugabe had ruled that unless wildlife made money the animals would be eliminated. These hunters described most of their clients as slob hunters, arrogant and ignorant and expressed their shame at being forced to participate in the murder business.
I was amazed to discover that a Texan accountant had won a prize from the Boone and Crocket Club for bagging a trophy whitetail deer and then he was exposed when it was discovered that the rack of an animal stolen from a taxidermist in Alberta had been surgically grafted onto a smaller animal on a game farm in Mexico where they flushed it out from cover into the sights of the "great hunters" rifle.
It was John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club who first described
hunting as "the murder business."
In a few places in the world people hunt for survival. In the past, people were forced to hunt for survival. The constituency the Sierra Club is now courting through its killer outreach program are not people who have a need to hunt for survival.
They are people who spend more money on weaponry, travel and related
expenses than the value of the meat they obtain. It is not the meat they are after but the thrill of the kill.
Dick Cheney, when not shooting lawyers, describes how he loves to see the ducks tumble from the sky. I've heard hunters describe how pulling the trigger gives them an erection.
These are men who slaughter for pleasure. I call them perverse death
deviants and I have no apologies for labeling them as such. Killing for pleasure is a sickness, no different than child molestation or rape.
There is no sport in killing an animal from a distance with a sophisticated tool designed to inflict death. The name sportsman implies that there is a fair contest. There is nothing fair about being ripped apart by high powered bullets.
Hunters target the biggest, the strongest and the best of the species they pursue. This is behavior outside the laws of ecology. It is unnatural predation and certainly cannot be condoned by credible conservationists.
Hunters defend their perverse desire to extinguish life by saying it is traditional. Unfortunately many barbaric practices are traditional. However, modern day hunting bears little relation to so called traditional hunting. Hunters today are more akin to those who eradicated the bison and took only the tongues.
Hunters were responsible for the extinction of the Labrador duck, the
Passenger Pigeon, the Eastern Bison, the Plains Wolf and the extirpation of the Grizzly from most of the lower 48 states. They were not only killers they were involved in the act of specicide - the complete eradication of entire species. This was not conservation.
Hunters cite Theodore Roosevelt as a big game hunter who was also a
conservationist. This is true, he was both. He lived in a time when killing for pleasure was accepted but it was also a time when racism was accepted as normal and it was considered abnormal for women to have any rights, especially the right to vote. Roosevelt did set aside land to conserve much in the same way that the British aristocracy set aside land as exclusive hunting preserves to keep out the lower classes.
The Sierra Club is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to reach out to invite killers to join the Club. The leadership of the Club believes that the over 80% of Club members who don't take pleasure from killing must be tolerant of the less than 20% who do. They want to bring in more killers into the Club.
There is a big difference between hunting and killing. Photographers and film makers can hunt wildlife. It actually takes more skill to hunt a Mountain sheep with a camera than with a rifle. Any nimrod can pull a trigger and send a high velocity bullet unexpectedly into living tissue to shatter organs and induce shock. The photographer brings back nobility, a creature caught in its natural habitat in harmony with the world around it.
The killer watches his victim tumble from the air or crash to the ground as it chokes and gurgles on its own life blood. The photographer brings back life. The hunter brings back death.
I have been a hunter myself. I've never killed anything but I have stalked and hunted human poachers. I have destroyed their ships, their rifles, their nets, their longlines and their harpoons. I have snatched clubs from the bloody hands of sealers and defended myself from their attacks. My form of hunting is much fairer and gutsier than these killers who prey upon their unsuspecting and innocent victims. I target the guilty not the innocent.
Once I trekked with Kenyan rangers across the plains of Tsavo on the track of poachers. We followed their trail of elephant carcasses rotting on the ground with only their tusks removed. We found the criminals. They fired on us and killed one of our rangers. We did not kill them. We wounded two and arrested seven. They were armed with AK-47 rifles and our rangers were armed with British Enfield 303's. We were up against a superior foe and we beat them. It was not sport. It was not fun. It was dangerous and necessary work and the objective was to save lives, not to extinguish lives.
That is the only kind of hunting that makes sense today in a world with a human population approaching seven billion. If every American exercised their "right" to kill, the ducks, geese, quail, elk, deer and other creatures would disappear quite quickly. There are simply to many of us and not very many of them.
It can hardly be an egalitarian sport if only a minority of citizens can realistically participate. Instead of encouraging hunting, groups like the Sierra Club should be discouraging the number of hunters. The nation and the world needs fewer killers of wildlife - not more.
In Europe over a hundred million songbirds are gunned down every year. Elephant populations have been reduced by 70% in East Africa since I worked on poaching patrols there in 1978. World fisheries are in a state of collapse. Wildlife is getter scarcer and there is more need now than ever for protection.
Why can't we protect wetlands simply because wetlands need to be protected? Why is there this demand that killers are needed to help protect wetlands simply because they want to slaughter ducks? Canada geese mate for life. Shouldn't it bother us that we shatter tens of thousands of these relationships every year? Why should we tolerate the accumulation of lead and steel shot in the marshes and estuaries? Why should we tolerate the legal murder of human beings that we label as hunting accidents, especially when the victim is a non-killer, perhaps a child some nimrod has mistaken for a deer.
The son of Sigmund Freud was walking on his own property in Quebec when a hunter shot and killed him. The killer was found not guilty because the death was ruled an "accident".
When a stranger can kill you on your own land and get away with it, it demonstrates that our tolerance for this legal killing has gone over the top of acceptability.
One killer wrote me to say that my "radical anti-hunting" ideas were
unacceptable for a member of the Board of the Sierra Club. When did
opposition to killing, to the taking of life, to the extinguishment of a living creature, to the wasting of a sentient being become a radical idea?
Sometimes I think we live in such a bizarre world where advocates for life are considered radical and proponents of death are considered normal, where violence is considered acceptable and non-violence is dismissed as unpatriotic or cowardly.
Few killers question the morality of their actions. Once you have reached a stage where you can inflict cruelty and death, thoughts of morality, empathy and respect have long since vanished.
For if a killer of a deer could feel the pain and anguish of his victim or see the fawn starve because of a mother that did not return they would have little appetite for the meat.
Humans who have crossed the line into dealing death and inflicting misery have become alienated from the wonderment of life and no longer see or appreciate the magic of being alive.
Life is to be cherished, protected, defended and championed, not to be wantonly and cruelly destroyed, and certainly not for so frail an excuse as pleasure or sport.
This essay may be freely distrbuted and published.
Captain Paul Watson
Founder and President of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (1977-
Co-Founder - The Greenpeace Foundation (1972)
Co-Founder - Greenpeace International (1979)
Director of the Sierra Club USA (2003-2006)
Director - The Farley Mowat Institute
Director - www.harpseals.org
_____________________________
Mr. Watson has obvious strong emotional opposition to hunting in general. While I strongly disagree with his catgorization of all hunters as "killers", I agree with him that the destruction of wildlife for purely human gain (or pleasure) is unacceptable. Where I fall most decidely on the other side of the fence is when hunting is used as a part of environmental conservation - the thinning of a wildlife population when there is no longer enough habitat to support it due to the power of procreation of both man and animal. Like it or not, since we homo sapiens have so drastically altered the balance of predators/prey on planet earth, we now need to take some responsibility for managing it all. Unfortunately, Mr. Watson's highly emotional, unobjective rant will no doubt polarize the debate even further.
"There are simply too many of us and not very many of them."
Bingo - the most objective statement made. Until the issue of human overpopulation is addressed, it will only get worse. And judging by the fossil record, you can bet your bippy it will be dealt with one way or the other.
What's next on the list? "Ban ant farms because they are exploitive entertainment?"
"Right-to-life for the Red Ant?"
"Termite food banks. Termites deserve to eat too!"
Who's personal cause gets cut off with them being told, that does not rate space on this PHOTO site?
Where is the line between what groups deserve survival help, and what groups can be ignored?
And is that what this site is for?
- - - I sure hope that a good photo site does not turn into yet another outlet for endless personal frustrations.
It is unfortunate that such black and white lines need to be drawn, and with such vitriol.
I am a "killer" myself, as are many of my friends. I don't believe that we fit the description of Mr. Watson, but that does not seem to be open for debate.
Neither I nor any of my friends kill mammals for "sport"; we have seen the effects and found them to be too emotionally painful to continue (cold comfort for the mammals I suppose).
Ironically we all have worked for a good part of our life to conserve and rescue wildlife. Myself with fish, others with amphibians and reptiles, still more with a variety of mammals, all of us with birds.
These diatribes are tiring. They do little, in the end, to solve the problems we face as a society and instead build fences, silence debates, and turn people against one another.
Hopefully we can find a way for "killers" and "anti-killers" to work together.
Alex
"This forum is intended for the discussion of environmental issues, habitat conservation and photography ethics."
This thread meets at least 2 of the criteria.
Guy
I am not a hunter though I have no objection to those who do hunt provided they utilize the animal they kill. I have no sympathy for those who sport hunt, kill a bear simply for a gall bladder or a caribou for the alleged aphrodisiac quality of the horns. It is disgusting to come across the body of a deer or moose that was shot purely for pleasure.
Arthur's post of Watson's comments, whether we agree with them or not, is in my opinion appropriate. As nature photographers we should be concerned with nature before photography or else turn our lens to fashion photography.
While I don't agree with all Watson has to say, neither do I reject his observations out of hand. If we are to be knowledgeable about nature, the hot topics forum does provide the opportunity to reflect on the opinions of others. It is as important to learn others opinions regarding nature as it is the latest camera firmware upgrade. Perhaps more so.
Dave
Guy
I just thought it made more sence to get every recent post instead of just ones in one small subject area.
I keep forgetting that a lot of people don't even know about that feature and others just stick to 1 or 2 forums.
hey Dave,
Wow - what an irony this is. Speaking of ignorant statements, what do you know about the situation you're talking about? Were you there? Did you even ask anyone (such as the photographer: I presume you're talking about me) about the situation? Perhaps if you bothered to do so, you wouldn't make such accusatory statements about a specific situation you know nothing about.
I agree with the rest of your post.
Thanks
Cheers
Carl
That was quite an article but I'm afraid I sit on the fence of it also. Spending a few months in Africa, I also witnessed some heartbreaking situations of animals being killed for specific parts (a young rhino poached for his horn) etc. However, I also got to witness the enthusiasm of some Kenyan tribal members talk about a hunt & the feast they would have, etc etc.
I think the objective should be on the type of person doing the hunting, not in the sport itself. I am a lover of nature first, a nature photographer second but am also a hunter, a fisher, and a wood cutter. Would this make me a conservationists enemy? Probably to some extremes. I love the taste of a fresh caught trout over an outdoor campfire. I love the crackle of my woodstove in the winter & and I enjoy wild game for a meal.
Personally, I have only ever hunt grouse & probably do not have the emotional capabilities to hunt a deer or a moose. They are beautiful creatures, but also one of the best meats I've ever tasted. So am I opposed to it? No! But I also firmy believe in hunting/gun education & licensing. I am totally against poaching & the fact that there are many untrained & uneducated hunters out there.
So while I find some parts of the article EXTREME, other parts about poaching for animal parts, I couldn't agree with more!
Any interesting topic indeed!!
Which part of the statement do you find objectionable? The fact that bears on a meat feed are very dangerous?
You can't outrun a bear, a telephoto might not help. They are very strong, I've seen dumpsters made of quarter inch steel torn apart by grizzlies on the hunt for food. Recently in Peace River AB a brown bear broke down the doors of a supermarket to dine, so being in a vehicle might not help.
I'm not here to argue with you, how you choose to life your life is your affair, if in fact it was your photo!
To my understanding we have had three deaths by bears so far this year in Canada. The most recent being in the Yukon by a grizzly. And the bears are just only out of their dens. Right now I won't go into the bush alone even with bear spray and whistles. The young males are staking out their territory and unpredictable. That isn't fear, it's respect.
Dave
When I used to hunt I also encountered persons like Mr. Watson who, through ignorance, made bold, sweeping and usually incorrect statements about hunters and hunting in general. They usually belong to the "other" group of people. By that I mean they are not part of the group who believe we all have the right to persue our own type of recreation and sport, within legal and ethical limits. They are not part of the group that says "I may not agree with what you do or how you do it, but you have the right and freedom to do it and I have the right and freedom not to and there's room for both of us so long as we don't harm each other". No, they usually belong to the group that thinks they are the gifted and brilliant chosen few and all should be as they are...and if you aren't then you are somehow less of a person and the bane of humanity.
I don't hunt any more, mostly due to age and lack of will power required to seek your quarry in the proper manner. I shoot with my camera now but I have found it much easier to "bag a trophy" with the camera than it ever was with a firearm.
Last, but not least, I have NEVER broken the law to further my cause. This can't be said of Mr. Watson. He readily admits to destruction of property, legally owned and used by others, simply because he disagreed with their intended use. Thank God we don't all do that! It would lead to anarchy. Sounds to me like he would be better suited to the Board of Pardons and Parole than the Board of Directors of the Sierra Club.
Thanks for getting back and some further input. If the photo you're referring to was one like this one then yeah, it's possibly mine. I wish I had the Alaska Magazine edition with me where Nick Jans wrote about that kill and the experience there. I don't remember it verbatim, but he kinda likened it to a circus or a zoo setting with the number of people around. What made it so special is that the wolves couldn't have killed that bull in a better and safer place for photographers. It was right off the road, but down in the river floor, with a ridiculously steep scree slope between the road and the kill. You might think I'm irresponsible or dangerous or whatever, but there were at least 4 Park Service Rangers standing beside me and they all felt it was OK. One of the Park Rangers even allowed me to get off the bus to shoot.
Was it irresponsible of me to post that without a bunch of information telling people how dangerous bears can be? You might think so, I disagree with that. Where would that end? Landscape photographers posting little notes about how dangerous mountains are? Rivers? The desert can be a dangerous place too. So can slot canyons. So can jungles. So can cities. Bull elk in the rut are dangerous creatures, but I see countless elk images posted on sites such as this. Do you call those photographers irresponsible? Moose can kill people very easily, but I don't feel anyone posting a moose image needs to "make people aware of the dangers" when they post a moose image on a nature photography site.
Of course bears on a kill are dangerous. What I find objectionable in your first post above is the implication that my post was dangerously ignorant (or ignorantly dangerous). Had you chosen to gather some information about the specific situation you're talking about, I think you'd feel very differently about it. To imply that my posting (and possibly my actions) were ignorant when you had no knowledge of the specific situation is, IMO, unwarranted and unreasonable.
Ya know what's ironic? I have been charged by a grizzly. by several different grizzlies. One big ole boar came within about 25 yards of me. Once I was by myself, once I was with one other person and once I was with 4 other people. And each time that happened I was doing everything "by the book", wasn't intruding on the bears, and being as safe and respectful as I know how. The problem is bears don't always read books. What caused those situations? In reality, just being in bear country. The only reason those situations didn't end differently is because the bears made the decisions they did. And I'm glad for the way it worked out. Personally, I find glacial travel and river crossings to be far more dangerous than bears, but they don't garner quite the same glory, do they?
Cheers
Carl
PS - edited a line or 2.
No, that wasn't the shot I had in mind, nice capture though. While I do see the point you are making, I still tend to disagree with you.
There is a book by a Canadian photographer of some excellent shots of polar bears, the most dangerous of all bears. Throughout the book the photographer goes to great lengths to say don't do this at home kids. He talks of the electric fencing he uses, various approaches he uses to take photos while emphasizing it is dangerous to do what he is doing.
While Watson doesn't touch on the subject, unfortunately, particularly among urban people, there is a tendency among some conservationists, to imply animals are our friends as though we could drop in on a Friday night and have a beer with them.
When I lived in Ontario I did quite a bit of tourism\nature photography. This would be a very long post if I were to regal you with the absolutely crazy things people did. Not so much out of stupidity as sheer ignorance. Going in without a first aid kit, keeping fresh caught fish in the tent, not taking extra food in case you were stranded by weather.
If you will indulge me with another storey from years ago when I was an assistant. We were doing a commercial shoot in Haliburtan Ontario, a place with a very healthy black bear population. It was the whole nine yards, models, client, art director and the fancy picnic lunch. It was about a mile walk in from the location to the vehicles. When returning from the shoot in the dark, the head of studio gave me the dickens for shuffling my feet. When I explained I was doing this to let bears know of our approach, it came as complete surprise to all these urban people that bears did in fact, live in the woods.
When you explain the shot you took, it is a very controlled situation. My concern is that somebody seeing such a photograph might think they can approach a bear with impunity. You mention falling off a cliff, people know about gravity. It is a calculated risk.
As you mention, you can't post a sticker on every photograph saying this is a dangerous activity. Again the concern may be because of the venue, many here are urban based photographers. While not wanting to imply they are stupid, rather some do express in postings things they have done that reveal an ignorance of just how dangerous the bush can be. My concern, and I hope you appreciate it, is in this venue we have many talented photographers who, seeing a picture of a bear feeding, might feel they can safely approach a bear, without the controlled environment you had.
My current location is on the edge of grizzly country and a great many black bears which are not as human habituated as I know in the south. When I first got here I took a course with the local bear expert to better understand the local situation. It was a surprise to me when he stated if you meet a bear on the trail never take its picture. His reasoning is that bears have poor sight and might interpret the raising of a camera as a threat. He has over thirty years experience as a bear guide, I'll believe him.
While others may disagree with me, I'm of the opinion part of what people should be doing is not just offering photographic details, but when the situation warrants it, 'environmental' information. I don't want to present myself as a bush expert, I'm not. Nor do I wish to be perceived as one of those individuals that feels everything needs a warning label.
To my mind, one of the great things about NPN is that there is a diverse base of photographers from around the world who can and will share their experience in shooting in various locations, including the pitfalls. To share experience with nature, good or bad, is important as sharing technical photographic information. They combine to make the better shot.
I'm off topic somewhat and rambling a bit, so I hope the moderators bear with me and that you do see the point I'm trying to make. It is about educating our fellows from our individual experiences, not alarming.
Cheers,
Dave
This image?
Bears on Caribou carcass.
Anyway, the points you've raised here are no longer specific to the image, so that doesn't matter too much.
Honestly, I don't agree that anyone posting here has any responsibility to warn the viewer of any potential dangers in taking similar shots. I certainly don't feel the need to warn nature photographers that approaching a feeding grizzly sow with cubs is dangerous. Now, if I''m going into the field with someone, anyone, I do make very clear the way I feel bear encounters need to be dealt with. I go out of my way with every person I enter the field with about bear habitat, bear behavior, and how human behavior can influence that. I have every individual read a pamphlet from the NPS about bears, and I try to cover as much information about how we need to conduct ourselves in bear country. I do similar talks about moose, wolves, river crossings, storms, glaciers and scree slopes, even other people we might encounter.
You said people know about gravity and that being around mountains is calculated risk. Well so, in reality, is walking in bear country. We do what we can to lower that risk, but ultimately it's up to the bear what happens.
A great example might be bison. Bison images are posted frequently, but I don't think anyone posting those images is obliged to offer the aside that "by the way folks, bison can and will kill you, easily". If they do offer that information, well, great. But I don't think that not doing so is 'wrong'. I'm not responsible for the actions of someone who views my images.
I agree that sharing information is great, be it technical, geographic, field experiences, whatever. But I think making a claim that those who don't are being irresponsible or dangerously ignorant isn't reasonable either. One could make similar claims that folks who post images of trees should add a note about the damage logging and the timber industry is causing - many (I'd say most) people have no idea. One could say it's irresponsible for someone to post an image of the Rockies or the desert without an accompanying diatribe about the damage the beef industry and welfare ranching on public lands does to those natural habitats. Guy Tal just wrote an article about the rights of artists to present their work without accompanying labels that are a function of other's prejudices (I don't entirely agree with his viewpoint, ironically enough, but it's a good read :) )
Cheers
Carl
Yes, that is the one.
I think on this matter we are going to finish by agreeing to disagree. My main concern at the moment is other wildlife. There is still snow on the ground, ice on the rivers and lakes and we have mosquitoes already. The size of quarters!
Cheers,
Dave
That's cool.
I hear ya - I'm not a fan of mosquitoes either. Brushed nylon clothing, head to toe, works the best for me. :)
Cheers
Carl
This does NOT mean that I'm opposed to hunting altogether. I know people who hunt, and they are great people and love nature. I simply say that there is no untouchable right granted to do so for everybody...
Hope what I write can be understood - I'm not a native speaker and expressing things very precisely in English is difficult for me.
Basil
--
Being of indigenous ancestry and a practicing gatherer-hunter, I have lived with my life staked closely to the health of the land. Today I run a school (www.dancinghawk.com) that mentors people in the old way of seeing, the old way of living, and the old way of relating to each other.
In Maantsu, 'to hunt' means to walk with a bow. It is a meditation, and it is a practice. We hunt because it is the way it has always been done, and it is the way to feed our people. When we stop doing the things our ancestors did, we often do not see the 200 year consequences of our actions. When we stop hunting, we stop relating to our brothers and sisters, the deer and the elderberries. There is a very simple connection that every native person who has kept her culture understands-- for anything to live, something else must die.
In today's culture, we carry with us a very distinct bias against death. We are afraid of losing our lives. We are afraid of losing the last redwood, we are afraid of those who would take another's life. But without a deep connection to death, it is impossible to understand life and the greater cycles that take place in ecosystems. Today the environmental movement is finally beginning to understand that when Europeans arrived in the New World, they did not walk upon a pristine 'nature', always balanced and ready to give. The Europeans walked into a forest that had been tended through native permaculture to be a veritable garden of eden. Indigenous peoples set fire to the oak savannahs to keep them open for deer browsing and acorns in California. Camas (blue-flowered) meadows were so large in the Willamette Valley that Meriwether Lewis believed them to be the ocean, and they were weeded of death camas.
For us to reconnect with the land, we must be involved with it. We make live with it, not outside of it. We cannot simply set it aside in preserves. We are a part of this great landscape, and the stories tell us that we have always been, and that we have always taken care of it. Today anthropology concurs that without indigenous involvement, many forest ecosystems are turning into deserts.
What does this mean? It means that if we are to make this earth a place where our children's children's children can live and play, we must be in it again. We can start small, by picking dandelions off the lawn to make wine.
'To hunt' means to take any life, including the life of tiger lilies, and basalt boulders. So we hunt cedars to make baskets and kayak frames. We hunt salmon to feed ourselves. We hunt deer with the red-osier dogwood arrows that they have been browsing.
Today the population is quite expansive. Nevertheless, despite our intuitive notions of overpopulation-- think of this-- Vancouver, BC used to support a native population of 3 million peoples who lived sustainably. That same area harvested the same number of salmon a thousand years ago as we do today commercially. How we do it, and our relationship to the fish and the sea and the river is very different. They kept 300 million fish returning to the Columbia River for several thousand years. In less than two hundred, we have reduced the Columbia salmon to less than 3 million, 90% of them hatchery fish.
In return for hunting a creature, it is the old way to offer it respect. With my students today, we have a First Salmon Ceremony where we return the spine of the first salmon to the river. Every fish we take is a gift, and we have incurred a debt which can only be repaid with respect and humility. All of my students take this attitude home with them, but not because the instructors beat them over the head with words. It is the experience of holding a fish out of the river with their bare hands and taking its life by hitting it on the head with a rock while slitting its gills that helps them understand. Experience is a great teacher, and combined with a strong cultural base, is the foundation for a healthy relationship with our siblings such as the Salmon People.
My students are both city-dwellers and rural folk. They range in age from 17 to 65. They are men and women. A few are native, many are white. Every one of them is sick of the violence that our culture passes onto each human being, and each living thing. By the time they leave our variably two week to five month residential programs, they are less angry, more joyful, more diplomatic, more radical, and more fun to be around (if I can make that judgement!) They have learned to get at least part of their food directly from the land, and how to give back more than they take.
You know, go back a few thousand years, and every single one of us has gatherer-hunter culture. We once knew how to live sustainably. There are some among us who have not forgotten. Their stories are still with us, and if you listen closely to the land, you can hear it telling us new ones. Every time I do something awkward, like peel a strip of bark that is too large, killing a shrub by accident, or getting sick by eating a piece of food that is spoilt (without using a refrigerator), I can hear the land speaking. Those lessons are awkward and hard to learn. Our elders are mostly gone. I feel compelled to build new stories of the land, build new relationships with all its inhabitants, including people.
I hope that I will one day have experience and stories enough to be an elder to my own grandchildren.
-Kiliii Yu, Dancing Hawk Native Lifeways
(Thanks for reading everyone! It is very late, so I apologize for any lack of articulation!)
To go back to the original letter that was pasted, one only has to read a few paragraphs in to realise what's at issue. The guy had an abusive father who was also a hunter. He has connected the two and as a result, no one who hunts can be anything but abusive, reckless, anti-conservation, anti-nature. As a result of his psychological issue he's spent his life an radical forms of conservation and preservation and in support of groups that routinely break laws in an attempt to further their objectives. His is not a rational and reasoned thought process. The rest of his rant can be ignored on that basis.
There is hunting and then there is hunting. Traditional ways of hunting that are sustainable as well as necessary to stay alive (and that include a clear respect for the hunted party as you say) are completely different from the hunting for fun and trophies. It is this last group of hunters that are the direct target of Watson (though I agree he is too 'black and white' in his letter), especially those that do not care about sustainability, do not have much respect for the animals they kill and do not feel themselves to be a part of the natural world.
I think that that 'modern' way of hunting is not necessary and indeed often harmful. At least it seems completely different from the kind of hunting you talk about.
Arthur, I think you're right, I didn't bring it back to the original post closely enough, which I had meant to do!
I think my take on hunting today is that hunting is in itself inherently a sort of prayer to the land. I see even those who hunt with a rifle as intimately more connected to the land than those who never venture into the woods for days at a time. However, our culture today has created a 'resource-extraction' perspective, and when combined with hunting, is a terrible thing to behold, and be around. I would say, let's not stop hunting and trapping, but encourage people to get closer. Let's lay down the rifle, pick up a bow, or even a twenty two. Then a hunter simply must get close, and must understand how the raccoon lives, before anything were to happen.
Today in our specialist society, even hunters are too specialized. If hunters also had to learn to gather, and learned to actually _depend_ on the world around them for at least part of their sustenance, then a new culture of generalism would develop. That would be the first step to reacquiring our indigenous eyes, in my reckoning.
Using laws to ban hunting and trapping (or anything, for that matter) is the only way a state-level society can maintain its order. If we want to have flexible guidelines that are handed down by culture, we will have to relearn community and localize. Smaller villages. Familial relations. Not so long ago, the censure of the community was akin to a death sentence, but forgiveness was always around the corner. In a culture of villages and communities, a hunter that shot and killed wantonly would be thrown out! Today that means nothing, but imagine if all your friends and family suddenly refused to speak with you, and every grocery store refused to let you in! Fortunately, those traditional cultures typically let people make mistakes, and a village-wide censure might only last two weeks.
It's so different than law, isn't it?
When people talk about political fixes, I recognize a duty to support what decent legislation I can, but also not to have much faith in it fixing things in the 7 generations ahead. For that, I look towards real, life-changing experiences in those who I live around.
So I guess I certainly do support the Sierra club's efforts, but also Greenpeace, and also the Earth Liberation Front. I also support other indigenous people's efforts. I certainly wouldn't support legislation making hunting more difficult. I believe that attitudes and cultures must change, not the letter of the law.
Of course for me it starts with my own life. The changes I want to see have to exist my own life. I want to live by example, and mentor through inspiration, story and experience. Each one of us can do this, and make the changes we want, but it's not an easy task.
Many times when I look at my car and then look at my bike, I think of the seven generations ahead of us. I also think of my brothers the Warani, whose homeland has been literally ripped apart by oil companies. When I check my email, I think about how Google is moving into the Dalles to get cheap power for its 6-football-field buildings and servers. I think about how the Dalles Dam flooded and swallowed up the most important native fishing location in North America, Celilo Falls. I think about the salmon that run their heads into concrete trying to do the dance they've always done.
When I think of these things, I remember that each turn of my car key, each keystroke on my computer, must absolutely be towards real, authentic change in the world. And then I get rid of one more dependency on this great violent culture in trade for making-it-myself. Five years ago, I learned how to stop buying meat at the store, and how to hunt and butcher and prepare a deer, which when all its parts are used, can feed me for an entire winter. Two years ago I learned to ride my bike in the rain, and how to plan my travels to avoid motorized vehicular travel. What will it be tomorrow? Each day, another step towards the joy of living more simply and enjoying more community and more sanity.
As a photographer, every single piece of my equipment is used or salvaged. It doesn't keep me from making good pictures, or documenting things that I consider important. But once again, whenever I click the shutter, I try to remember that somewhere, somebody else pays the price for my privelege.
Thanks for reading, friends.
There are people who don't hunt for survival who are not the dangerous, anti-nature, anti-animal, monsters Watson portrays them to be. There are people who hunt annually, but not for survival, and who then eat the meat of the animals they kill. There is, or should be, nothing wrong with that form of hunting but clearly, Watson is against it. I think many would agree that sport hunting is not a desirable practice but Watson is not restricting his comments to sport hunting.
If he feels so strongly about the murdering of animals I certainly hope that he is a vegan, or at the very least a vegetarian because if he eats meat then he condones the slaughter of animals to fill his table and is a hypocrite because he thinks it's alright for abattoirs to do the killing, just as long as it's not done where he has to see it or know about it. Similarly if he owns any products made of leather or a down pillow or comforter for his bed.
Why is he not trying to change the economic situation of some of these African countries so that people don't have to resort to operating or working in game safaris to make a living? He cites the nature or wildlife photographer as a noble person. Such a broad generality cannot be supported. Yes, there are photographers who do their best not to harm the environment they work in, but there are others who don't give a damn and will bait animals, walk in sensitive areas and otherwise upset the balance of the local ecosystem just to get a photograph. The ignorance his comments displays only serves to confirm the lack of reason and rational thought that went into the comments.
There are people who don't hunt for survival who are not the dangerous, anti-nature, anti-animal, monsters Watson portrays them to be. There are people who hunt annually, but not for survival, and who then eat the meat of the animals they kill. There is, or should be, nothing wrong with that form of hunting but clearly, Watson is against it. I think many would agree that sport hunting is not a desirable practice but Watson is not restricting his comments to sport hunting.
If he feels so strongly about the murdering of animals I certainly hope that he is a vegan, or at the very least a vegetarian because if he eats meat then he condones the slaughter of animals to fill his table and is a hypocrite because he thinks it's alright for abattoirs to do the killing, just as long as it's not done where he has to see it or know about it. Similarly if he owns any products made of leather or a down pillow or comforter for his bed.
Why is he not trying to change the economic situation of some of these African countries so that people don't have to resort to operating or working in game safaris to make a living? He cites the nature or wildlife photographer as a noble person. Such a broad generality cannot be supported. Yes, there are photographers who do their best not to harm the environment they work in, but there are others who don't give a damn and will bait animals, walk in sensitive areas and otherwise upset the balance of the local ecosystem just to get a photograph. The ignorance his comments displays only serves to confirm the lack of reason and rational thought that went into the comments.
BTW, took a look at your Project Canada website. Nice. It's interesting that someone from outside Canada is working as hard as you are to preserve the beauty inside Canada. I used to live in Calgary and loved the mountains. Sadly I haven't been back much since I moved back to Ontario. I like the Mamiya too. I had a C220 for a time before I got my RZ.
if it wasn't for the fact that watson is doing a lot to protect our shark populations right now i'd be tempted to write his ratings of as those of a madman. the anti hunt brigade are typically extreme and only go for the non attainable extreme.
however, the fact is, things are terribly complicated and many of the posts so far have been from typically western ideals.
i've been living and working in south america for the last three years, and whilst i appreciate the wise and beautiful words of kiliii, they are somewhat only relevant from a western society viewpoint. much of western society has arrived at the rich land of utopia, with it's big cars, big houses and breast implanted neowomen, and found that it is not all it's cracked up to be.
people like kiliii quite rightly offer hope to an already aware and educated population. the west is in a position of knowledge and can attempt to stear the developing world into a brighter future.
however, the developing world is much like a growing child. it does not want to hear that ice cream makes you fat, or that cigarretes only addict you to cancer, that petrochemical development destroys environments, the growing child only wants to try, to suck it and see.
the sad and simple fact is, killing animals is very big business in the third world. it's linked to big big organisations, to governments, to mafia, to drugs cartels. if you thing photographing bears is dangerous, try being a conservationist in the third world.
the sad and inevitable part is that the guy caught in the middle is the indigenous father. he has children who the west tells him can have a bright future, and the drugs baron is behind him all the way, ready to push him into never never land with a false passport in a stolen car, if he will just go and catch one more shark/bear/rhino/elephant or whatever might be a ready natural resource.
we can all wave our wands and wish extremists would go away, or get a plot, or something, but in a lot of the world, the only way is extreme. shark finning was banned here in 1994, but does it still go on? sure it does, and the police and the navy are the biggest financiers. if there wasn't some crazy guy going around sinking boats or assinating poachers, believe me there would really be no one doing much good.
am i a vegitarian? no. am i a puritanical pansy? no. i used to go hunting and watch a pack of hounds hunt foxes. i fully know what kiliii means when he says that to hunt you have to fully know the quarry. it is a means of conservation. i saw the hypocracy of a government ban on that when they spouted on about animal pain and their rights against that, whilst they ignored wounded and dying pheasants and ducks.
believe it when i say it, because i see it first hand, day in day out, the situation in many parts of the world is critical. legislation is very very ineffective in a corrupt society. what are you doing about it?
my 2 cents worth.
m
mr fisher, if you took time to follow all the links, you might arrive at the projects page of eyemocean.com and see that i am currently engaged in such a project and am nearly bankrupting my self in doing so. if you would like to make a dontation, please do so, if you are currently engaged in likewise activities, please consider yourself exempt, if you are just another empty headed armchair e-critic, please pass go, do not collect £200, and consider your pathetic attempt at worthwile debate wholly ignored.
m
And yes, I am engaged in a similar project although not wildlife related. I am working on a project to photograph and document all of the remaining lighthouses in Canada. When I have a sufficient number that are of sufficient quality I'll be launching a website for the project to promote it. I've also had preliminary discussions with a publisher about a series of books for the project, with all my proceeds going to local preservation and restoration groups. Thus far, I've expended a not insignificant sum for film, processing and travel with much, much more to go. I am not asking for donations, nor will any revenues generated from print sales or lighthouse calendars or similar items sold off the website or through any other channels be kept by me. It will all be turned back to the local groups. I've been working on the project for about 18 months and am out of pocket about $8 to $9k so far.
good luck with your project. i hope it goes well for the lighthouses, i come from near that world famous postcard one on the isle of wight. let me know when the books come out, sounds interesting.
Write me an email if you desire - I could mail you the pamphlet if you're interested.
A couple decades ago my philosophy professor assigned me a term paper on "Hunting is Wrong". The essense of my paper was that the simple question is far too vague and even if posed in a more focused manner that most of society would tend to frame the question with, it would all depend on circumstances and that many exceptions can be given for any of the general situations. ...David