Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!uflorida!gatech!ncsuvx!ega From: ega@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu (Everette G. Allen) Newsgroups: rec.birds Subject: We all Kill Wildlife Message-ID: <2327@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> Date: 16 Nov 88 02:01:06 GMT Reply-To: ega@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu (Everette G. Allen) Organization: NCSU Computing Center, Raleigh, NC Lines: 77 So Joyce now that you have made you position clear, lets talk about the real issues here. First I should not need to tell you that education is the primary need to help wildlife. The mere fact that you are so upset at fishermen as well as hunters indicates that hunting alone is not the problem. Let me make my position clear before I go on. I am a hunter, a trapper, a fisherman and I have a BS in Wildlife Biology. Wether I can hunt or trap or fish is a *POLITICAL* issue not a biological issue. I don't have to tell you that loss of habitat is the greatest killer of wild creatures today. I have great respect for the outdoors as well as the creatures in it. I have lived on a farm all of my life. When I am in the woods I take care of them ie pack out trash etc even if I didn't bring the trash in. You and every other person I have ever seen flame hunters and every consumptive user I have ever seen flame non-consumptive users of wildlife have the wrong attitude. Sure each can blame the other. Great, now we have a war to fight in the House or the Senate, but the critters you keep picking up each day keep right on dieing or getting hurt because no body is doing anything real. Wildlife rehab is great, I think that you and folks like you do a great job, but most of you arn't creating any habitat to put those animals back into. Some groups are, and we need more of that. BUT UNTIL PEOPLE BEGIN TO LOOK AT THE EARTH AS A WHOLE COMMUNITY AND ** RESPECT ** IT we arn't going to get very far. So the real issue here is how can we get hunters and bird watchers and trappers and photographers to pull together side by side to preserve habitat and quit doing stupid things like throwing down 6-pack rings and mono line?? Answer = EDUCATION. My rifle kills once, ignorance kills over and over and over. I am at this moment involved in planning a lobby for MANDATORY hunter safty here in North Carolina. I have given and hope to continue to give programs to k-12 school childern on practical environmental ethics. I am neither consumer nor non-consumer oriented in these just see the world as a whole ecosystem and take care of it. I am with you: do away with all wildlife enforcement, but put that money into education. You, I am sure, are one of the people who can and does educate all people when you get your chance. This is great, the more we can do it the better. But please work with me and don't shrug me off as a lunatic like the folks you have encountered just because I hunt. I enjoy being in the woods or on the river because I get to be there and see nature. I kill to have hunted. I eat what I kill and I enjoy all phases of the process. I want my children to grow up on a farm where they will learn about life and ethics by living them not by talking about them. I hope they will understand hunting and see it the way I do. Remember death has its place for all of us and all living creatures. Your answer to preventing suffering is to heal individuals. My answer is to kill individuals and leave an opening in the habitat. In this country we have a right to take different views on how things should be solved. What we have to do is put aside these differences and work to save land and educate people side by side before its is too late to do anything. If you want to really save wildlife, buy 100 acres of land and let it grow up, become a primary school teacher and teach land ethics and conservation to your students, retire early, move to Washington, DC and become a strong pro-environment lobbist. These are the real issues. You and I are going to have to deal with them or be prepared to loose the wildlife we love. So I say channel your anger into education and leave the antihunting politics in rec.politics. BTW, This is not a flame it is a call to arms. If anyone out there can comprehend this stand with us by teaching your children good outdoor ethics. The choice is ours: fight among ourselves or fight the real battle together. Everette Allen Associate Wildlife Biologist EVERETTE@NCSUVM.NCSU.EDU Disclaimer: If I didn't think this way I wouldn't live the way I do.