“The quicker we humans learn that saving our wildlife and open spaces is critical, to our welfare and quality of life, maybe we will start thinking about doing something about it.” Jim Fowler
Come with me for a moment, let’s take a walk on a trail in the Cascades. We stand before pristine Pines and an occasional Redwood. On this warm day the aroma intoxicates, blends romantically with the snap of a twig. The trail soft, as dry pine needles underfoot.
As we walk into the treeline, we notice, to one side of the trail, is a hound dog. He was used, at one time, for tracking Cougar. His decayed skin and what’s left of the dog’s bones tells its history. He’s been there for awhile, obvious the radio-collar taken off, then left by the owner. Claw marks in the dog’s hide tells the story, wounded and then abandoned . . .
Those of us in the mountains see too many wounded or neglected track-dogs that are left behind, and way too often. To say a majority of these “Hounders” are good animal keepers is an outstanding lie!
Stepping through the treeline we come to a clearing, rather quick. Wait. It’s not a clearing, it was a forested but obvious devastated area. It is a destroyed ecosystem. It’s the result of an over-browse situation from deer, Elk, and several other browsers.
The deer and Elk, supposedly regulated and managed browsers’ (most often incompetently by state or federal agencies), remained in this area too long, that is, until a proper browse no longer existed. The animals then moved-on to another area to devastate. This situation is caused by no Predators (wolves and Cougars especially) available to keep them moving; essentially browsing a little here, chased out, then move to another area and so on – which prevents devastation and over-browse to a single area.
The predator’s here were hunted and trapped, unconscionably, until few remained alive. So the browser’s now go unchecked…
We walk to the edge of the clearing and toward a creek. We want to follow the trail back into the forest; instead we wonder into a dank and rotting smell of decayed animal flesh. A Bear carcass lies along the side of the trail, its flesh rotted, with its stomach contents oozing into the creek. There is a bullet hole in the Bears skull. It is missing claws, teeth, gull bladder and a couple of other organs – the rest left to rot.
The creek is polluted. An oil/diesel and hydraulic-fluid slick floats by in different colors on the top of the water. It comes from a timber clear-cut just up the mountain, out of sight from the main road.
So much for a pleasant morning walk along a mountain trail. . . the fact is Poacher’s and neglectful trophy hunters abundant here, and their supposed conservation ethics seen quit readily, in reality non-existent and yet another outstanding lie – basically only written about in hunting magazines. These negative virtues come from an evolved hypocrisy combined with a not so ironic narcissistic and sociopathic tendency to feel killing a subordinate species to be their “Right” and to hell with everything and everybody else!
Change creates Resolution
What is wrong here is obvious. The methodology or paradigm toward wildlife management, within our mountains and forests, currently emphasize a management-paradigm only for a storage-complex for America’s Wildlife classified as Hunt-Animals – rather than the more humane management that creates preservation of ALL Wild Life and intermixed with a sound and productive Forest/Mountain environment. It is ALL one complex, as one link weakened or taken out, the remainder will collapse within a short time period!
All of our government’s management paradigms remain antiquated. This when compared to superior methodologies toward a diverse usage suggested in today’s more advanced and humane principle’s toward animal/environment management ideologies — rather than Special Interest Use Only principle’s that exist currently, and show beyond a doubt their narrow-defined data-collection and usage-research extremely flawed, via guess-ta-ment percentages, are erroneous most often, and demonstrated repeatedly in the field.
Yes, (one of the best examples, one of many more) these types of paradigms and formulas do not consider the extreme movement of a heard, into one canyon safety-zone, for example, and goes unseen; then the mind-set becomes a “kill-the-predators because they have killed our Elk and deer . . .
The herds, whether Elk, deer, or Antelope, repeated here, were simply unseen by the counters – or the counters were paid but never left their desks in their offices, and relied upon their percentages from previous years – also in error!
The reality becomes daunting to many people . . . An entire realm of American’s, the majority, remains left-out of nature’s finest, and indeed have become a low-priority (the tax payers who pay for it all), compared to hunting in these areas, being our government’s management priority. But our wildlife and environments are being destroyed – It is that simple!
The dead Bear and the dead Dog leave their message. Many of today’s hunters and trappers statements mean nothing, their actions scream to us loud and clear – the profoundness of the occasion, as we acknowledge, is not unique at all, and is one of many within our mountains of today – we see it – we tell others about it – the truth of the matter – and eventually action will be taken, eventually appropriate changes made – but the necessity loud and clear as well, those changes need to be made sooner than later . . .
Photojournalist - Journalist 