Some Environmentalists Are Figuring Out Hunters Aren’t Their Enemies After All

The idea that hunting can be an important tool in managing flora as well as fauna isn’t exactly new. The North American Model of Wildlife Conservation has been around for darn near 150 years, and hunting is an integral part of the model. 

Still, there are a lot of environmentalists who refuse to accept the premise that responsible hunting practices can be beneficial to wildlife populations,, which has led to opposition to bear hunts in states like New Jersey and even attempts to curb or limit deer hunting in some communities.

As Claire Greenburger writes for The Daily Catch, some eco-warriors in New York have had the scales fall from their eyes, and they’re now taking the “hunting is conservation” message to their friends and fellow environmentalists. 

Masha Zabara marveled at what happened to the forest once deer weren’t around to decimate the understory. In the fenced 13-acre site in Southern Columbia County, in New York, wildflowers had become reestablished. Tupelo and sassafras trees rose head high. Red maple stump sprouts and oak saplings thrived.

“It was like stepping out to another planet,” Zabara said. “It was a really beautiful moment, but also a really sad moment.”

In that simple plot, Zabara saw what ecologists have long warned: deer overpopulation is preventing the Hudson Valley’s forests from regenerating; without intervention, they warn, essential native species will vanish within decades.

To be fair, though, hunting advocates like Zabara often have very different ideas about the priorities for wildlife conservation, not to mention the rules and regulations around hunting itself. 

Gazing at the forest plot, Zabara, who co-owns the Tivoli clothing store, Thrift 2 Fight, understood for the first time that hunting deer could be an important act for an environmentalist. Together with Red Hook-based native plant and landscape rewilding specialist Zoe Evans, Zabara founded Eco-Hunting Alliance Hudson Valley. The two describe themselves as “eco-hunters,” focused on hunting wildlife in ways that promote healthier ecosystems. Their goal is to bring new hunters into the fold, share sustainable practices with experienced hunters, like using copper rather than lead bullets, and push for regulatory changes that would meaningfully reduce deer populations. 

Those regulatory changes can be a double-edged sword. Greenburger spoke to lifelong New York hunter Joseph Varlaro, who expressed his vehement opposition to legalizing the sale of wild game, for instance. Valaro believes allowing that could lead to overharvesting of deer with devastating consequences to the population. 

“You don’t want the numbers to drop to the point where there are no deer,” he said. For new hunters, he added, one of the most discouraging experiences is spending a day in the woods without seeing a deer.

I hear Valaro’s concerns, but it seems to me that it would be relatively easy to establish a pilot program in parts of New York State to see the effects of allowing hunters to offer their harvest for sale. 

According to Greenburger, drone surveys on two conserved properties in New York’s Columbia County found anywhere between 65 and 115 deer per square mile, which is about ten times the number needed for forests to regenerate without tender plants and young trees being munched into oblivion by hungry herds. Given that only about 14% of the state’s 620,000 tags for antlerless deer are filled each year and some ecologists are calling for a 50-fold increase in the number of harvested deer in some parts of the state, I’d say there’s plenty of room to experiment with efforts to increase deer culls in those areas where overpopulation is a critical threat to wildlife habitat, including allowing hunters to put some money in their pocket in addition to putting food in their freezer. 

The Second Amendment doesn’t exist to protect our right to hunt, but hunting is part of the national tradition of gun ownership and should be seen as a Second Amendment-protected activity. And though “eco-hunters” like Zabara and Evans may still support various gun control measures, by expanding the number of hunters across the country we also have the opportunity to educate those folks on the importance of conserving our right to keep and bear arms alongside conserving wildlife populations and habitat. 

Editor’s Note: Christmas is coming a little early here at Bearing Arms! 

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