Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Val Geist on Game farm "hunting".

This from an interview by David Peterson and published in the Denver Huff Post:

Petersen: Aside from its role in the spread of diseases, what are your views on the game farming industry?
Geist: Game farming is utterly incompatible with the maintenance of free-roaming wildlife on this continent, standing in direct opposition to all four basic tenets of the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation and democratic hunting: (1) Wildlife "ownership" must be held exclusively in the public domain. The corollary is that wildlife must never become private property. (2) In order to save North American wildlife from extinction, we long ago outlawed market hunting and commercial trafficking in dead wildlife. But game farming depends utterly on developing a huge and growing legal market in dead wildlife, throwing the doors open to illegal marketing of wild animals as well. (3) The allocation of the public wildlife resource among private citizens must be regulated by due process of law. It's the American way. It's a way that works for all. And what does game farming give us? Wildlife allocation by financial privilege. Canned hunts make a mockery of ethical democratic hunting. (4) Fair chase! Neither the U.S. nor Canada allows the frivolous killing of wildlife. But what restraints against frivolous killing exist in the private sector? None. A canned shooter may buy as many animals as he or she wants and kill them for whatever reason, in whatever fashion, no matter how frivolous, immoral and disgusting.

You said it, Dr. Geist. Let's keep the hunt in hunting!

3 comments:

  1. There are a lot of debates regarding the free roaming and farm gaming. There shouldn’t even be one is there? They want to protect the wildlife. Farmed animals are raised for such purposes. I wouldn’t mind using the Best Crossbow for Hunting in these game farms.

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  2. I agree that folks like you that want to harvest an animal on a game farm should be able to do it. I don't call it hunting but if you want to so be it.
    Where game farming gets dangerous is in it's role and potential to spread disease to wild population. Chronic Wasting Disease is the prime example. It is well documented that deer game farms/high fence operations have spread CDW to many areas of the US and CA thru legal and illegal moving of breeding stock. It is only one fence break or nose to nose contact thru the fence for CWD to spread into the wild herd. Where this has happened is devastating to the wild herds of deer and elk and is an unacceptable risk to the future of hunting.
    Bans on high fence shooting does not stop game farming, but because it is the most profitable form and the biggest driver of live animal trading (to increase/improve trophy bucks) it does serve to reduce the spread of game farms and the disease threat.
    this is the argument that led to the banning of any new high fence operations in Vermont last year.

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