To understand the present one must first appreciate the past ‑ because what happened in the past is what shaped everything that led us to where we are today. Every past event, and man’s reaction to it, represents a building block in the foundations of civilization. It is necessary, therefore, before we attempt to understand, to explain, and/or to rationalize any present day state‑of‑affairs that we tabulate, interpret and evaluate the record of all those matters of historical significance that brought that state‑of‑affairs into existence. This applies, particularly, to the state of wildlife management affairs in Africa at the start of the new millennium.

Those species of wild animals that competed with man’s agricultural endeavors and his living circumstances were, purposefully, eradicated by him on every continent, on every island, and in every corner of the earth throughout recorded history. Nowadays all yesteryear extinctions are, more often than not, blamed on the extravagances of the olden‑day hunters. This distorts the truth because, although excessive hunting may have contributed to many of these extinctions, the greater majority occurred for other reasons.

In most cases wild animal extinctions were caused, incidentally, because ‑ for example ‑ agricultural expansion drastically changed the animals’ habitats.

The demise of the Passenger Pigeon in the USA has been blamed on market‑hunters (wildlife harvesters) that supplied nestling pigeons to the East Coast restaurants. The real cause of the pigeon’s extirpation, however, was a massive expansion of agriculture in eastern United States towards the end of the 19″‘ Century. The Passenger Pigeon died out because its habitat ‑ undisturbed and continuous deciduous woodland ‑ was thus destroyed!

It was the expansion of agriculture that caused the extinction of the Blue Buck and the Quagga (a zebra) in South Africa!

In the early part of the 20″ Century hunters were accused of causing drastic declines in the winter populations of ducks and geese in the United States. The real culprits were, again, the farmers who drained and ploughed up all the wetlands along the long flight paths the wildfowl used between their summer breeding grounds in arctic Canada and their wintering grounds in southern United States.

Happily, the ducks are now as plentiful as ever because the hunters raised billions of dollars in self‑imposed taxes that they used to pur­chase and to re‑instate the ducks’ wetland habitats.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 at 4:03 pm and is filed under Ron Thomson Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.