Honorable Forum:
I'd like to see some serious discussion of how ecology as a science and
ecosystem management as a subdiscipline could better inform "game"
management as a professional practice and a political phenomenon.
Increasingly, it seems that we, as a society, are regressing back to the
time when the King's and Queen's owned all wildlife. That is, the people who
actually live in the wild are effectively prohibited from hunting and
fishing, for example, through supposedly "democratic" lotteries for "tags"
that the unwealthy can't afford. This forces those priced out of this
"market" to poach, and what little data comes from the occasional arrest is
worse than useless. The King's and Queen's from distant cities fly in, bang
their buck, and the local businesses get a bigger bang for the buck from
servile service to these head-hunters than from the local customers they
already have--those who aren't in jail or who have had to allocate the
scarce discretionary income they can scrape up to the government, money they
can't spend in local stores and for local services. This, of course, is
primarily a political aspect of the issue, but has its roots in a
well-intentioned conservation "ethic."
I'd like to hear from across the spectrum what biologists and ecologists and
others interested have to say about this subject in general and the cited
hypothetical in particular.
WT
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael E. Welker" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, March 22, 2011 9:55 PM
Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] the precautionary principle makes sense and should
be applied to GCC arguments
White-tailed Deer and Beaver?
MW
----- Original Message -----
From: Wayne Tyson
To: [email protected]
Sent: Tuesday, March 22, 2011 1:32 PM
Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] the precautionary principle makes sense and should
be applied to GCC arguments
Passenger pigeon, anyone?
WT
----- Original Message -----
From: "James Crants" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, March 22, 2011 10:35 AM
Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] the precautionary principle makes sense and should
be applied to GCC arguments
> On the contrary, examples exist (sea mink, cod) of animal communities
> being
>> greatly diminished at the hands of the very people turning a profit
from
>> their harvesting.
>>
>> Phil
>
>
> The tragedy of the commons. The benefit from harvesting a resource
> accrues
> only whoever collects it (and probably to some middlemen), while the
costs
> are shared by everyone with a stake in the resource. The economically
> rational thing to do, on the individual level, is to harvest as much as
> you
> can, but this produces the collective result of putting all the
harvesters
> out of business. The only way for them to stay in business is for them
to
> accept some set of rules (either their own or someone else's) that keeps
> them, collectively, from over-harvesting. If the resource is very
scarce,
> the rules might say not to harvest at all, on the assumption that all
the
> rule-breakers will harvest at unsustainable or barely-sustainable rates.
>
> It's an economic theory, but while almost every ecologist I've talked to
> about it seems to be familiar with it, every time I've mentioned it to
an
> economist, I've gotten a blank stare in return.
>
> Jim
>
>
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