THE ECOSYSTEM APPROACH
From the Eleventh Annual Report of the Council of Environmental
Quality, entitled “Biological Diversity”:
Managing for the enhancement of yields or the survival of one species
invariably affects others; benefiting some, harming some. In contrast,
the ecosystem approach intentionally preserves diversity rather than
doing so incidental to maximizing one or a few kinds of organisms…The
underlying idea is that an undisturbed ecosystem will permit a wide
variety of organisms to exist in a quasinatural balance with minimal
human subsides…Because human ecological knowledge is incomplete, there
is great virtue in letting nature take its course rather than
intervening – action which may be well-intended but sometimes misguided
or even heavy handed…Most species in well-designed ecological reserves
will maintain abundant levels and escape extinction indefinitely without
species-oriented help, so long as they are not deprived of feeding,
hiding and breeding places and are not polluted, hunted, or harassed
severely. [Hunting is severe harassment.]
The report concludes:
Providing sufficient tracts of undisturbed land and fresh water
obviates the need for heroic intervention to prevent extinction. A
further advantage to the ecosystem approach is, once land is purchased,
administering ecological reserves is much less costly than managing
species by one. [Game management]
Conservation means “the deliberate, planned guarding and protecting
of something precious.” The deliberate mismanagement of wildlife for
hunter recreation and exploitation has nothing to do with protecting
something precious such as wildlife and our environment. In fact,
hunters’ license fees are used to manipulate a comparatively few game
species into overpopulation at the expense of a much larger number of
non-game species which includes the extermination of natural predators.
This contributes to the loss of biological diversity, genetic integrity,
and the ecological balance of wildlife. Hunters’ licenses pay for
environmental degradation, not conservation as is claimed.
