Last week WBURs On Point broadcast a show entitled Ethical Hunting. The host, Tom Ashbrook, spent the majority of his time interviewing Lily Raff McCaulo and Steven Rinella. McCaulo recently published a book, Call of the Mild: Learning to Hunt My Own Dinner. Steven Rinella is the author of Meat Eater: Adventures from the Life of an American Hunter and host of the TV show MeatEater on the Sportsman Channel. The ecologist Stuart Pimm of Duke University makes a brief appearance as well.
I have not had a chance to read either book. For those of you interested in the broadcast, though, a few thoughts on what to listen for from an ethics and policy point of view.
Ashbrook pitched the show as one of locavores and traditional hunters rediscovering an ethic of hunting. He did an absolutely superb job eliciting attitudes towards hunting from his guests, as well as the many hunters who called into the show. The show was an interesting success because of this.
What the show lacked, however, was any real engagement with ethics.
McCaulou central point was the outdoor experience, a phrase that elides the thrill of killing, seeing animals in the wild, learning a bit about ecology, and wrapped up in a patina of locavorism. Rinella represented a more traditional perspective — hunting is fun, skulls and antlers are cool. Pimm uncritically repeated the canard that hunting is broadly responsible for wildlife protection.
Absent from the discussion was any consideration of the moral value of animal lives, much less any sustained reflection on the ethical norms that ought to underly hunting. To his credit, Ashbrook asked questions of McCaulou and Rinella that could have taken them in this direction. Neither guest was prepared or interested in doing so.
I think the reasons for this moral silence are three fold.
The anthropocentrism and speciesism of the guests is the first reason. Learning to hunt for McCaulou is presented as a personal journey. She met some hunters through work, found out they were good folks, got curious about what they do, and discovered she enjoyed herself in the woods more while trying to kill something. As for Rinella, he stylizes himself as a modern hunter-gather, and reflecs a dominionist approach to animals as resources to be used at human whim. Neither guest conveyed anything that steps beyond anthropocentrism and speciesism.
The second reason is confusing personal preferences for ethical understanding. Ashbrook and his guests thought they were talking about ethics because they discussed the preferences and values of the guests and callers. While individual preferences and values certainly inform ethics, they are not the same as moral understanding itself. With respect to animals, moral understanding requires that we grapple with the intrinsic moral value of animals, their membership in a moral community to which we too belong, and the conditions and justifications over when it is legitimate to take animal life.
A third reason was simply failing to invite anyone with ethical expertise in either animals or hunting. Pimm provided a veneer of scientific credibility, but as so often happens, the producers made the mistake of thinking a natural scientist has the expertise to talk about ethics. Few actually do.
As a point of information, it was market hunting that drove many species to extinction (e.g., the passenger pigeon) and decimated the populations of others (e.g., moose). Even today, hunting (legal and otherwise) risks extinction events (e.g., elephants, rhinos) or decimation of reestablished populations (e.g. wolves, lynx).
What saved wildlife in North America was the regulation of hunting and the protection of habitat and species. The fees paid by hunters do help in this regard to be sure. Their contributions are dwarfed, however, by the transfer of federal, state and provincial lands for habitat, and the fees and taxes paid by non-hunters. Having said this, I do not mean to minimize the contributions of hunters. I know many of good will who care greatly about conservation. I simply do not want to exaggerate huntings role in wildlife management.
One other thing. I highly recommend the written comments to the program that are posted on the website. They bring out some of the moral and policy dimensions that were missing from the on air dialogue. I left a rather long comment myself which I have appended below. You can read the other comments at the Ethical Hunting page of the On Point website.
Great program that raises important issues. Many fine and insightful comments too, hunter and non-hunter alike. As someone who works on ethics and public policy, and specifically human-wildlife interactions, I want to share a few thoughts.
No ethic of hunting is worth its salt if it does not start by recognizing the intrinsic moral value of the animals we hunt. Non-human animals are not simply biological automatons, or functional units of ecosystems. They are living, feeling and often thinking creatures whose well being we can either help or harm through our actions. This makes them part of what ethicists term a moral community. The intentions and consequences of our actions on animals is what makes hunting (and human-animal interactions generally) an unavoidable ethical issue. This does not automatically translate into determining whether hunting is good or bad, but it does mean it is always subject to moral evaluation and challenge.
Deciding whether hunting is right or wrong is not a matter of black or white morality. It is a situated moral decision — a moral judgment rooted in particular cases. Considerations of suffering, degrees of intelligence, the social and cultural impacts on animal lives, ecological context, and aligning our actions with nature, are some of the key moral consideration that go into deciding whether hunting this or that animal, in this or that place, is justified or not.
I have taught and trained a great many people in ethical decision making over the years. The major pitfall in considering issues like hunting is to rely too heavily on one moral concept to the exclusion of others. Stressing compassion for animals alone, or looking at animals as simply a recreational resource, are two cases in point. One is better off trying to triangulate on the ethics of hunting by using a variety of moral concepts simultaneously. It is harder, but you will develop a deeper understanding overall.
An ethics of hunting also has to be developed over the full range of moral issues that confront it. This includes everything from fair chase and clean shots, to the impact on the individual, to the effects on animal families and groups (e.g., packs, herds), to the broader ecological and social contexts in which hunting occurs. One cannot simply claim you adhere to fair chase, for instance, then dismiss the rest of the issues because they are complicated or make you uncomfortable.
It is also important to note that no human community is immune to critique of its hunting beliefs and practices, whether these people are of the First Nations, traditional use, sporting groups, animal rights, and so on. There is vibrant debate within these and other groups, that can inform all of us about hunting. The divisions within the Makah peoples over whale hunting is a case in point. Some saw whaling as a traditional practice that would help young men avoid drugs and crime. Others saw it as morally offensive to kill another being to solve their societies problems. Their debate raised resonant issues with whaling throughout the world, bring questions of animal welfare, marine ecology, and cultural diversity to the foreground.
Finally, we must remember that hunting is never responsible for maintaining the balance of nature, and is a crude and ineffective means of wildlife management. Proper land use management, habitat protection, and intact predator-prey relations are the keys to maintaining healthy populations of wildlife. For an example of this applied to hunting deer in suburban areas, please see my blog post, http://www.williamlynn.net/blog/aldo-leopold-and-green-fire/.
I must admit that as an ethicist, the question of hunting has bedevilled me for a long time. My dad was a hunter, and I am not. Yet I am not opposed to hunting per se. I have known many ethical hunters with a deep love of the natural world and an abiding respect and care for wildlife. I have also known hunters who strut about and kill other creatures to make themselves look and feel important. So when I take all the factors into account, I think hunting must minimally conform to four principles (rules of thumb).
First, it must focus on animals that humans in aboriginal contexts would hunt for food. Hunting for sporting thrill or to mount trophies is not an ethical approach to wildlife. The attempts in western states to virtually eliminate recovering wolf populations under the ruse of sports hunting illustrates the abuse of wildlife for these base motivations.
Second, hunting has to balance its use of technology to ensure a fair chase that is aligned with what prey would experience in nature. The use of bait stations, global positioning systems, radio collars, corrals (canned hunts), drugs, packs of dogs, all terrain vehicles, assault weapons, and so on exceed this balance, and should not be used.
Third, the hunter must take full responsibility for his or her actions. This means clean shots, trailing and humanely killing wounded animals, dressing and consuming, and finally culpability for harming other human beings. I was at a meeting the other day where a hunter dismissed the deaths of bystanders with the claim that accidents happen. That is a callous attitude toward the lives of other citizens, and to my mind, probably bespeaks a callous attitude toward the lives of animals as well.
Fourth, hunting must be undertaken by someone knowledgable and deeply respectful of animals and the environment. I am of a mind that ethics and ecology based continuing education programs should be required for the privilege of hunting. Nothing onerous or doctrinaire, but something that would generate increasing knowledge and conversation around ethics, wildlife and ecology.
Image: H Morgan. 1900. Wolves Hunting An Explorer.