Quit Making Environmental Policy From the Heart
My home state of Nevada has a serious environmental issue, wild horses.
Wild horses were “introduced” to the wild after the agricultural switch to tractors and after the military mostly got rid of its cavalry. These wild horses and donkeys were hunted in some pretty horrific ways by ranchers and “mustangers,” who correctly saw them as an agricultural pest.
Congress got rid of mustangers by creating the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971. This bill stated that all wild horses and donkeys were property of and would be managed by the federal government.
They proceeded to not manage them in any meaningful way.
Make no mistake, wild horses, as they exist today, are an invasive species. Sure, a distant relative of the modern horse existed in North America 5,000 years ago, but the world of five thousand years ago is a different place from today. There are other species now; some species are extinct, the land is drier, and in case you forgot, industrial human civilization is here now.
If you’re new to this issue, you would be forgiven for wondering how the issue has gotten so out of hand.
Animal rights activists, mostly.
Whenever some sort of management is proposed for this damaging and invasive species, an urban activist will protest with teary eyes and say, “Why are you hurting these poor innocent animals?”
Activists will gather and protest. Then they will go to their suburban homes and urban apartments and never see the consequences of their actions. Meanwhile, people in rural areas and smaller towns will have to see overgrazed meadows and starving horses.
The protesting and lack of actual management like relocation, pasture rotation, gelding, or just a cull have led to a limp wristed sterilization campaign. Bureau of Land Management employees go out with a dart gun and “vaccinate” horses, which renders them infertile.
This vaccination campaign has only slowed the growth of herds across the western United States.
Trophy Hunting
It is an undeniable fact that trophy hunting does more for the local environment and economy than any activist seeking to ban it could ever hope to contribute.
Think back to your grade school food chain lesson.
When a prey population gets too high, there is a predator population to bring it back down. A sort of cyclical equilibrium.
What if there aren’t enough predators? What if there are no predators? Then the prey population goes up and up. The grass they feed on gets stripped from the land, other animals can’t get enough food, and any habitats get destroyed. (This also plays a part in the wild horse problem.)
This is a key idea in both regular hunting and trophy hunting. Humans come in and take the place of the regular predator to help maintain that equilibrium.
Banning trophy hunting would only hurt the local environment and economy. Hunters can’t go in and spend money with local businesses and guides, and they can’t help manage prey populations.
Why people want to make environmental policy from the heart makes sense. CEOs of oil companies, big business types, and monsters think with their wallets.
Where environmental destruction comes from greed, saving it must come from passion and the heart.
I get it. That sort of mindset makes sense.
But part of growing up is realizing how apathetic and awful nature is. Coyotes don’t care about the feelings of a deer when they tear it apart while the deer is still alive. Things in nature are rarely done from the heart.
Making environmental policy from the heart means trading one kind of environmental damage for another. But with this kind of environmental damage, activists can feel good about themselves.
