The Cost of Conservation

Hey everyone,

found this today and thought it was worth a read. It comes from an article called The Cost of Conservation by Robert Rice, President of The Native Fish Conservancy

He writes:

"Love to tell you this folks, we all are in the same boat, Bass fishermen, Elk hunters, Trout guys, Carp Guys, Recreational collectors, Recreational Hikers you name it we will all be hurting if these enviro-nazi’s have their way. Because without the financial support of sportsmen there will be no place to enjoy, no place to hunt, no place to hide. It’s past time for all of us who enjoy the outdoors to work together for the future of our natural heritage. No longer is it the Bass guys problem, the Hikers problem or the Hunters Problem. It is everyone’s problem. We are looking at a fundamental shift in how the conservation business is done and those of us who pay the bills are getting left out of the discussion. If the Enviro-nazi’s have their way we will live in a country with no hunting, no fishing and very little recreational use. The wildlife will be “managed” using birth control and love beads. Of course without the money from licenses there will in short order be no way to support our public lands and the psuedo science management techniques of the Enviro-nazis. Imagine the folly of managing just one no kill, no predators, birth control only herd of 1000 deer. In a few years it would be a herd of 1000’s or it would cost millions to maintain it at 1000 animals. Imagine the birth control patrol keeping records on every animal, every birth and every death. A staff of dozens, plus hardware, plus no money coming in and no science based management practices. Now apply the same silliness on the national level as the new “green” policy. Man what disaster that would be. A system run without science or wise use of our resource to promote long-term conservation is bound to fail. Emotion should not be applied to resource management."

"With that said let’s look, without emotion, at the facts. First off lets deal with the supposed moral high road argument. It is framed by vegetarians and the like with the statement or one similar to this “I don’t kill animals to eat them and neither should you. Since I don’t kill things I’m more moral than you and therefore better than you”. Now let me preclude all this by saying I have no problem with being a vegetarian. I’ve tried it myself for a while, but I’m not stupid enough to believe a food choice makes me more moral than the next guy. The content of my character makes me moral not the content of my stomach. I realized a long time ago that for me to eat something had to die. Look at it logically. Lets say I’m a vegetarian and eat tofu and four greens spring salad with light dressing for lunch. As I gag down my tofu, I get the warm fuzzy feeling of superiority. I start thinking I’m so good because nothing had to die for my lunch. I begin to loath those animal killers around me. How dare they eat that flesh in front of me? Sounds pretty much like I the salad eater is the good guy right? Except the salad and soybeans are grown in a large field which was once a western open prairie until someone turned it into a field. By farming it they disrupted it, they ruined the habitats of the thousands of small rodents and lizards and snakes and of course the guys a little higher up the food chain like hawks coyotes etc. All of them lost a place to live and a greatly diminished place to hunt. Now it gets even better. In order to be more productive the farmer uses modern techniques that include herbicide and pesticide. Guess what? They work and lots of bugs, good ones and bad ones all bite the dust. After the herbicides, plant diversity is gone but you do have your salad and tofu. After the harvest comes yet another killing spree called a disking. A disk is a good and wide super plow that cuts the soil deep killing other bugs and anything on the surface that gets caught in the way like snakes and such. The cow from whence my steak came spent most of his life passively hanging around a pasture being fed hay and grains all the while little bugs and birds and lizards all shared his field with not much interference in the pace of their lives."

"Who then really supports the killing, me and my beefsteak, or you and your tofu medley? We both do, and as such we are on equal moral footing. Perhaps I even have the superior moral position for the cow that died for my benefit went into my stomach. All those things that died to make your salad were not used by and were wasted. Rather immoral I would say. How many thousands of little guys died to make your salad? Innocent little guys, guys that did nothing wrong except be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Little guy’s part of a bizarre and amoral world called the food chain. Where animals of all types eat things to survive with no compassion for how fair it is or how pretty the thing it is eating looks. What a harsh and cold world."


I thought Mr. Rice did a wonderful job defending the sportsman's positions, and for that reason I consider him a Sportsman's Advocate.

Read the entire article here.

The Pain Factor

This Sea Kitten thing really bugs me....

The number one argument that PETA has with fishing is that it hurts the fish when they are caught. Well, I know that this is not true from personal experience, but I'm not going to use that as evidence. So, I looked up an article in Reviews of Fisheries Science, Volume 10, Number 1, January-March 2002 , pp. 1-38(38). The Neurobehavioral Nature of Fishes and the Question of Awareness and Pain, is an article written by Dr. James D. Rose of the Department of Zoology and Physiology at the University of Wyoming after more than 30 years of research on the subject.

Dr. Rose came to 3 main conclusions:

(1) Behavioral responses to noxious stimuli are separate
from the psychological experience of pain.

(2) Awareness of pain in humans depends on
functions of specific regions of cerebral cortex.

(3) Fishes lack these essential brain regions
or any functional equivalent, making it untenable that they can experience pain.

He states, "Because the experience of fear, similar to pain, depends on cerebral cortical structures that are absent from fish brains, it is concluded that awareness of fear is impossible for fishes. Although it is implausible that fishes can experience pain or emotions, they display robust, nonconscious, neuroendocrine, and physiological stress responses to noxious stimuli. Thus, avoidance of potentially injurious stress responses is an important issue in considerations about the welfare of fishes."

PETA would not take this for an answer, so they launched their own studies with their own scientists and made up their own results. They argue thing such as "Stupid people feel pain" as evidence that fish feel pain and that Dr. Rose is wrong. It is not a question of intelligence, as I would believe that fish in general are much smarter than some of those on PETA's payroll, but it's a question of neuroscience. Fish lack the brain regions to process pain. But PETA still refuses to believe that fish cannot feel pain after so much incontrovertible evidence was set forth by Dr. Rose. It seems such a mark of stupidity to reject the findings of people who devote their lives to science because you want to prove a point.

If you wish to read the brilliant research on the subject you can read a summary by Dr. Rose here, or if you have access to online science journals look up the 38 page article in full.

The Sea Kitten.....Really?

Okay, so I'm not really sure if this is a serious thing or not, but it is probably the thing that pushed me over the edge.

PETA has recently decided that the word "Fish" should be changed to "Sea Kitten". The reason for this is to stimulate sympathy for fish and end the "Cruel hunting of Sea Kittens."

I am an avid fisherman and a biologist who has studied under an ichthyologist for several years. I have a lot of respect for the game that I pursue and study. But I also understand that if it wasn't for the efforts of sportsmen that the conditions that fish live in would not be even remotely similar to what they are today.

In recent years sportsmen across the country have worked and funded efforts to improve water quality and protect habitat. They do it in an effort to support what they love....fish.

I wonder if anyone involved in the Sea Kitten Campaign has thought about what would happen if fishing was outlawed. Have they thought about what would happen to the people who own businesses that are supported by fishing? I don't know what to think of a world that puts the rights of fish above the rights of people.

One more thing that is so outrageous that I'm not sure what to make of it. On the Fishing Hurts website that PETA uses to get this message across it implies that good Christians won't eat fish because it is unhealthy and cruel to God's creatures. Despite the fact that it is widely agreed that eating fish is good for you, the Bible states "Let us make people in our image, to be like ourselves. They will be masters over all life--the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the livestock, wild animals, and small animals." Gen. 1:26. So don't make this a biblical issue because the Bible is not going to back you on the abolition of the practices of sportsmen.

The Sportsman's Advocate

Welcome to The Sportsman's Advocate. I feel that I have an obligation to begin this blog as a response to a group that steadily attacks my way of life. I am an avid sportsman and farmer and I am tired of sitting idly by as PETA says that people like me will cause the end of the world.

PETA tells us that sportsmen are unnecessarily cruel murders of wildlife that should be left alone. That the world would be in perfect order if people didn't kill poor defenseless animals. In defense of the sportsman, things aren't as you might believe.

Did you know...

-That according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), sportsmen provided 1.8 billion in 2001 through license fees and taxes alone to help fund conservation efforts nationwide.

-That same year, hunters contributed another $200 million to conservation organizations, including DU, and other sportsmen’s groups, and spent a staggering $4 billion to lease, manage, and own land for hunting.

-If not for controlled harvesting by hunters, overpopulation of wildlife would lead to slow and painful death of animals due to disease.



Hunters and fishermen aren't on a misson to destroy wildlife, in fact, they are wildlife's leading supporter.

Hunting, fishing, and farming have been around since time began. Until recent years no one would suggest that we should leave all the animals alone and eat only vegetables. Now I know that not all PETA supporters believe that vegetarianism is the only way, but PETA as a whole does, and that my friends is ridiculous.

It is often argued that people have no right to eat animals, but look at it from a biological standpoint. Consider a simple food chain: Radiant energy to plant, plant to herbivore, herbivore to carnivore, carnivore to top carnivore. That is as simple as it gets. Man is an omnivore among the top carnivores.

I can never understand why any group of people would try to make any other group of people conform their beliefs. I'm not out to tell vegetarians that they have to eat meat, why do they feel that they have to keep us from eating animals.

I'm not out to attack anyone...that being said I will fight back when my way of life is attacked.