Nameless Range
Well-known member
I did Google it. Just stream-of-consciousness while the kids eat breakfast this morning....
A discussion around wolf hunting the other day, and the fact that I purchase a wolf tag every year, brought forth a rejoinder from someone who doesn’t that they don’t do so because they believe in “Science-based” management. I mean, so do I, though I wonder how useful a tenant of the NAM it is given how broad a thing “science” is. Talking about Wolf Hunting on the internet is akin to starting a gun control thread on Hunt Talk, but when it comes to what I personally do or don’t do, I have often thought of something I heard the comedian Neal Brennan say the other day: “Sometimes my internal Supreme Court is a 4-3 Decision.” I’ve only ever been inside my own head, but the describes my decision making better than the absolutes we often speak in.
The internet philosopher in me thinks Science can inform us on how to get somewhere, but it doesn’t necessarily tell us where to go. That decision - the destination to which we want to head – is arguably the product of many things, a sort of Is-Ought Problem. I suppose we could resolve this problem by expanding what science includes. Wildlife Science? Social Science? Cultural Science?
For years I have played a game in my head. Read a position piece against the possibility of Grizzly Hunting or of Wolf Hunting. Every time you see the word grizzly or wolf, replace it with mule deer, or elk. More often than not the logic will hold just the same…“But there’s too many elk ( or mule deer) in Montana!” Not in most places. Not for most animals we hunt and fish.
In the same vein and often for the same reasons in opposition, the term “balanced-ecosystem” is used. Certainly not trying to straw-man, but to many, it seems that a balanced ecosystem is one that reaches and keeps a sort of sustainable undulating equilibrium sans any human interference or influence. A kind of model of the world as it was before westward expansion, and maybe well before that. I think there’s a flaw here. The difference between a native and non-native animal really is a difference revolving around human changes to a place, and is a useful distinction for a lot of things. That said, there’s something circular happening, and unresolvable as long as we breathe air here. Does scientific management include the science around the most influential animals on the landscape, or are we omitting those? How does the science of a culture interplay with the science of wildlife populations and how do we weigh each?
A culture belongs to those within it, and the world is changing damn fast, and though of course culture exists on a sort of 4D spectrum, there’s an undertone of self-flagellation in a lot of modern thinking as if we aren’t deserving of thinking of ourselves as critters , that I think sets us up for confusing conversations. I can think of nothing that we govern and manage solely through a science that omits human interest, though I do believe that is the destination many would like for wildlife as long as the interests omitted aren't theirs.
If we agree on the destination, science can guide us as well as anything. But in many conversations over the years, I think it’s in the destination that confusion and disagreement exists. My own destination being as much heritage – customs and traditions; what I feel like doing – as much as anything. And that is a very shallow thing to defend. Think of encountering some far away society, very different from yours, and asking them to defend their culture with logic against your own. How fruitful would that be?
We’re leveraging “science” differently to justify taking different trails because we’re hoping to head to different places. The internet has really coagulated the melting pot, and so I largely think that’s where we are at, and “science-based management” is often a concept without much utility.
A discussion around wolf hunting the other day, and the fact that I purchase a wolf tag every year, brought forth a rejoinder from someone who doesn’t that they don’t do so because they believe in “Science-based” management. I mean, so do I, though I wonder how useful a tenant of the NAM it is given how broad a thing “science” is. Talking about Wolf Hunting on the internet is akin to starting a gun control thread on Hunt Talk, but when it comes to what I personally do or don’t do, I have often thought of something I heard the comedian Neal Brennan say the other day: “Sometimes my internal Supreme Court is a 4-3 Decision.” I’ve only ever been inside my own head, but the describes my decision making better than the absolutes we often speak in.
The internet philosopher in me thinks Science can inform us on how to get somewhere, but it doesn’t necessarily tell us where to go. That decision - the destination to which we want to head – is arguably the product of many things, a sort of Is-Ought Problem. I suppose we could resolve this problem by expanding what science includes. Wildlife Science? Social Science? Cultural Science?
For years I have played a game in my head. Read a position piece against the possibility of Grizzly Hunting or of Wolf Hunting. Every time you see the word grizzly or wolf, replace it with mule deer, or elk. More often than not the logic will hold just the same…“But there’s too many elk ( or mule deer) in Montana!” Not in most places. Not for most animals we hunt and fish.
In the same vein and often for the same reasons in opposition, the term “balanced-ecosystem” is used. Certainly not trying to straw-man, but to many, it seems that a balanced ecosystem is one that reaches and keeps a sort of sustainable undulating equilibrium sans any human interference or influence. A kind of model of the world as it was before westward expansion, and maybe well before that. I think there’s a flaw here. The difference between a native and non-native animal really is a difference revolving around human changes to a place, and is a useful distinction for a lot of things. That said, there’s something circular happening, and unresolvable as long as we breathe air here. Does scientific management include the science around the most influential animals on the landscape, or are we omitting those? How does the science of a culture interplay with the science of wildlife populations and how do we weigh each?
A culture belongs to those within it, and the world is changing damn fast, and though of course culture exists on a sort of 4D spectrum, there’s an undertone of self-flagellation in a lot of modern thinking as if we aren’t deserving of thinking of ourselves as critters , that I think sets us up for confusing conversations. I can think of nothing that we govern and manage solely through a science that omits human interest, though I do believe that is the destination many would like for wildlife as long as the interests omitted aren't theirs.
If we agree on the destination, science can guide us as well as anything. But in many conversations over the years, I think it’s in the destination that confusion and disagreement exists. My own destination being as much heritage – customs and traditions; what I feel like doing – as much as anything. And that is a very shallow thing to defend. Think of encountering some far away society, very different from yours, and asking them to defend their culture with logic against your own. How fruitful would that be?
We’re leveraging “science” differently to justify taking different trails because we’re hoping to head to different places. The internet has really coagulated the melting pot, and so I largely think that’s where we are at, and “science-based management” is often a concept without much utility.
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