This commentary is by Mike Covey, executive director of the Vermont Traditions Coalition.
A recent opinion piece about wildlife issues was questionable at best. Some of the accusations put forth are truly concerning, in that people might be led astray by them.
I will preface this letter with a question, one you may all ask yourselves. Our Fish and Wildlife Board members know going into it that they are going to be putting a target on themselves by simply accepting the position. Do you believe people would sign up for a term as a public servant that comes with a great deal of responsibility, criticism and commitment, but virtually no compensation, without harboring a love for the wildlife of our state?
Recent attacks upon members of the sporting community, the board, and the department have reached a point where it is clear that an agenda, rather than legitimate concern, is driving the narrative.
We see folks write about a nebulous concern that the board has the capacity to pass a rule against the suggestion of the department, but they fail to mention if this ever happens or not. Wondering about it, I reached out to Vermont’s director of wildlife, Mark Scott. Mark has been with the department since 1982 and could only recall one time, way back in the early 1980s, where the board passed a rule the department didn’t feel was scientifically sound. This wasn’t an all-encompassing rule, but simply started the wood duck season at an earlier date than the department suggested.
When we look at the facts, the statement that our Fish and Wildlife Board ignores the scientists on such topics as moose permits and bear hunting is nothing short of a bold-faced lie.
We also often hear terms thrown around with no context. This manipulation of language to mislead the public is referred to by the anti-hunting crowd as “persuasive language.” A prime example is the term “species of greatest conservation need” (SGCN). While threatened and endangered species are certainly among the ranks of SGCN, not all SGCN are threatened or endangered. In fact some are quite common, and are designated as SGCN to ensure that they remain common, with the snowshoe hare I had for dinner yesterday being a great example.
When you see the term used as a cry to arms, dig deeper. There is a strong likelihood you are being led to a certain reaction that may or may not have merit.
Some folks like to downplay the sporting community’s contribution to Fish and Wildlife Department funding, stating that federal funds are derived from taxes on “products that are unrelated to hunting and fishing.”
That couldn’t be further from the truth.
The Pitman-Robertson and Dingell-Johnson acts are largely funded by excise taxes on hunting, fishing and shooting equipment, from firearms to traps to fishing lures. These are taxes the sporting community supported levying on themselves to support the resource, much the same as Vermont sportsmen and women supported a license fee increase in 2019 to support our public fisheries.
The fact of the matter is that somewhere between 70% and 80% of the department’s budget is funded by the sporting community, and we can hold that as a point of pride. That’s 70-80% of their entire budget — endangered species work, habitat protection, law-enforcement, administration, even office supplies. If, as these folks would like, hunting became a thing of the past, who would supply the enormous funding gap that would occur? Click here for more information on this.
These same folks will tell you that trapping and hounding are terrible, but will fail to mention that bearhounds are our best nonlethal deterrent for bears that cause problems or that over $41 million has been spent in the last three decades to revolutionize trap design for the sake of ensuring the welfare of trapped animals. Each of those topics is an entire dissertation in and of itself. For the sake of space, I’ll note that The Wildlife Society supports regulated hunting and trapping for the value they bring to our wildlife.
I would further note that hounding of bears is our best nonlethal deterrent to problem bears and without our dedicated community of houndsmen and women, our bears will lose every time.
The concept that use of our wildlife is a zero sum game, with winners and losers, is an outright lie. The general public doesn’t suffer because hunters, trappers and anglers use a portion of the resource, nor does our wildlife. Nowhere in modern history has regulated recreational hunting, trapping, or fishing been harmful to healthy wildlife populations, and quite often those connected to the resource through their pursuit of game are the ones to sound the alarm.
Wildlife benefits from the financial contribution provided by the sporting community, and the portion of animals that are harvested doesn’t harm populations. Every year nature produces a surplus and that surplus will die, whether it’s from predation, starvation, or disease. When humans take a portion of that surplus for our own use, we remove the load on the landscape and allow the rest of our wildlife to thrive.