The Peasant Wars

(Republished by permission)

Opinion by George Dovel

George Dovel is Editor and Publisher of The Outdoorsman.

In 2003, North America’s foremost wildlife scientist, Dr. Valerius Geist, made the following observations:

“The miracle of North American conservation is that it is basically a blue-collar system, grounded in the political and financial support and the active participation of large numbers of middle-class citizens who bring their basic honesty and decency to bear on important issues. This is just the opposite of the elitist system that has existed throughout Europe for centuries and is spreading like cancer around the world today, even right here at home.

“Because of the democratic nature of American hunting and wildlife management, and the demands for accountability it implies, our system has worked miracles in returning wildlife to a continent that, just a hundred years ago, saw the near-extinction of most big game animals and other wildlife. In my mind, this represents the world’s greatest environmental achievement of the last century.”

In 2006, representatives of the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (WAFWA) adopted and agreed to fund the “Public Trust Doctrine in Fish and Wildlife Conservation.” This was essentially a doctrine reaffirming that wildlife is the property of the people, held in trust and managed for them and by them, and that hunting shall remain a democratic process available to all of the citizens who own the wildlife – not just the wealthy.

Yet WAFWA and the state wildlife agencies are exploiting the wildlife by selling it to the wealthiest hunters and excluding less affluent families from equal opportunity to harvest the wildlife they jointly own. The so-called “North American Model of Wildlife Conservation” is ignored in their rush to promote wolves and agendas that destroy the wild game sportsmen spent more than half a century restoring.

A week or so ago, in an exchange of emails between scientists and other concerned outdoorsmen like me, Dr. Geist wrote the following observation:

“I may be permitted to take this opportunity to comment on another matter, namely the futility – in the long term – of narrow conservation efforts such as those of the Wolf Recovery Foundation.

“My point of departure is the exceedingly brutal history of wildlife management in our occidental society, which, unfortunately, is all but unknown to North Americans. It inevitably begins with wildlife held as resource in common, accessible to citizen for their use and training in arms.

“It winds up as the de facto private property of the elite, which disarms citizens, and protects its privilege position of owning wildlife by force of arms (against the citizen). This is one substantial reason among others for armed rebellions by the deprived, most notably such bloody rebellions as the peasant wars of the 1520’s and the French revolution.

“Take away wildlife or make it irrelevant to the citizen, and wildlife winds up as private property, jealously defended. There is good reason for this as wildlife is a creator of wealth and privilege and thus very valuable.
Currently, simple-minded efforts to spread and multiply wolves lead to a depletion of wildlife – severe enough to lose the hunting public and with that the passion for wildlife. And with that it moves very surely into private ownership.

“And when wolves, grizzly bears and cougars are private property, the public has no say over their fate. I need not emphasize that even in North America the de facto grasp for wildlife by large land owners has led to the defense of that wildlife against the public with force of arms.

“Currently on Vancouver Island the following developed. With the return of wolves in the 1970’s deer populations dropped precipitously. The hunter kill went from about 25,000 deer annually to less than 3,000 in recent years.

“Deer hunters go to the mainland to hunt deer now. Still, it’s a loss to the island economy of about 50-75 million dollars.

“The large forest companies began to close and cut off roads that were previously kept open by public pressure. There is little protest as the voices are now so few for keeping the back country open.

“Deer are very scarce in the backcountry, not worth the effort to get there and hunt.

“The latest we hear now is of chalets being planned in the now – roadless – back country were wealthy clients can go to recreate by helicopter in a wilderness setting. The good fishing in the backcountry lakes, the hunting of giant elk, the wilderness, etc will thus be reserved for the elite.”

Best regards
Val Geist

Whether you are a hunter or fisherman, a natural resource manager, or just a citizen who is concerned about the ongoing depletion of our valuable wildlife resource and our way of life, I urge you to contact your State legislators and express your concerns to them. Write letters to the editor, call in on talk radio, and do whatever you can to energize your fellow citizens.

Remember English philosopher Edmund Burke’s warning, “The only thing necessary for the triumph (of evil) is for good men to do nothing.”

And when your efforts are criticized I urge you to remember this:

“He who fears criticism is hopeless. Only those who do things are criticized. To hesitate for fear of criticism is cowardly. If our course is right, be not afraid of criticism; advocate it, expound it, and if need be, fight for it. Critics always have been and always will be, but to the strong-minded, they are a help rather than a hindrance. Take your part in life’s stage and play your part to the end.” Thomas Jefferson

Posted by Tom Remington