It’s Survival of the Weak and Scrawny

As a mature sheep biologist, I know this story well.

It dates from a 2003 paper published in the academic journal, NATURE, by Dr. David Coltman, a respected population geneticist and five other authors (including Marco Festa-Bianchet, quoted by Ms. Huang). This article was highly technical, and would have interested only scientists studying population genetics and ecology if NATURE hadn???t publicized the controversial arguments from the paper???s ???Discussion??? section.

Since that presentation was one-sided, the sheep management community offered a broader perspective when several prominent bighorn sheep researchers and managers authored rebuttals. In an effort to capture and disseminate these arguments consistent with scientific tradition, I compiled, and we published these essays in the Biennial Proceedings of the Northern Wild Sheep and Goat Council, a symposium held by professional scientists and managers specializing in northern wild sheep.

This paper, ???Inferred Negative Effect of ???Trophy Hunting in Alberta??? was published in the Council???s 14th biennial proceedings (2004 available on line-at www.nwscg.org --along with Marco???s 2006 rebuttal).

As the compiling author, I wrote:

"The wild sheep management community is diverse???. When humans interact with mountain sheep, the goal of producing human benefits while conserving sheep requires the overarching effort we call "management."

For optimal management, complete and rational integration of information produced by the diversity of disciplines within the wild sheep community is required. This almost never happens because few "basic researchers" understand the complex nature of management, and few "managers" appreciate the imputed significance of some "basic research." ...If there is any value to recording this event, it is probably as a case study where academia and management collided??????

It is perhaps worth noting that ??? the world seems to have pretty much forgotten this ever happened...and it???s only been three years. Nevertheless, the Ram Mountain "scientific finding" is "out there," and it would be naive to presume politically partisan publicists will not resurrect it for use as it suits the anti-hunting agenda. I may be paranoid, but my experience at all levels of involvement in the wild sheep research and management communities suggests a high probability it will pop up again...it's just a matter of when.???

Ms. Huang???s motives are unknown to me, but her casual scholarship, given both sides of the controversy are well documented available on line, invites inference about her journalistic rigor or motivation. I suggest the human side of this story of scientific passion and frailty, is more relevant than the esoteric biological arguments exposed thus far.

Wayne Heimer- Wild Sheep Biologist, Alaska

This article is another perfect example of a large reason (among many) why magazines like Newsweek are in massive decline -- self-proclaimed experts like Lily Huang and selectively picked "facts" , plus editors who think an srticle sounds "interesting" but again are so isolated from reality that they too just allow trash like this to be printed -- feels good, sounds good, must be fact, right? Here are a few pesky facts 'ol Lily did not mention: 1)There are more whitetail deer today than there were when the pilgrims landed. 2) The "little" buck passed today becomes the big buck of tomorrow -- many states have limits that allow many more bucks to survive 3) Taking a big buck is not easy -- they probably make up .5% of the harvest or less, 4) Take a look at the record books and see if there are more or fewer big bucks being taken? Answer: more. Reason: Better deer mgmt by states and individual landowners. 5) The article itself only really pertains to big game animals like bear, elk and deer and bighorn sheep -- does not apply to upland game & waterfowl . For example -- hunters cannot pick out "trophy" ducks or pheasant or quail. 6) If... there are fewer trophy elk for instance, is it because of trophy hunters or because 1500 wolves in Montana/Wyoming have been killing off the younger herd members (herd down like 25-30%) for several years who would be today's big bulls?? 7) I am tired of hearing about "loss of habitat" -- we have cougars, deer and bear moving back into places Paul Revere lived in 300 years ago -- moving into where man lives, as much as vice versa. 8) For instance, has Lily heard anything about the rise in mountain lion attacks?? Or maybe mountain lions in Omaha, NE?? Is that because their weak gene pool (only losers are breeding) has been hunted to extinction, or because they are following the abundant deer supply to where the deer live... 8) Are fish stocks down because sport fisherman are keeping "the big ones" or because foreign trawlers have decimated the stock?? Arrgghhh!! It goes on and on and on ... I am glad I read the article in a Doctor's office ... I can rest assured for another 20 years that Newsweek remains a haven for insular, poorly researched, liberal, and yes, just downright stupid articles like this one.

This article is another perfect example of one large reason (among many) why magazines like Newsweek are in massive decline -- self-proclaimed experts like Lily Huang and unnamed "researchers" who have no effing idea about what they write, plus editors who think an srticle sounds "interesting" but again are so isolated from reality that they too just allow trash like this to be printed -- feels good, sounds good, =must be fact, right? Here are a few pesky facts 'ol Lily did not mention: 1)There are more whitetail deer today than there were when the pilgrims landed. 2) The "little" buck passed today becomes the big buck of tomorrow -- many states have limits that allow many more bucks to survive 3) Take a look at the record books and see if there are more or less big bucks being taken? Answer: more. Reason: Better deer mgmt by states and individual landowners. 4) The article itself only really pertains to big game animals like bear, elk and deer and bighorn sheep -- does not apply to upland game & waterfowl . For example -- hunters cannot pick out "trophy" ducks or pheasant or quail. 5) If... there are fewer trophy elk for instance, is it because of trophy hunters or because 1500 wolves in Montana/Wyoming have been killing off the younger herd members (herd down like 25-30%) for several years who would be today's big bulls?? 6) I am tired of hearing about "loss of habitat" -- we have cougars, deer and bear moving back into places Paul Revere lived in 300 years ago -- moving into wher eman lives, not always vice versa. 7) Has Lily heard anything about the rise in mountain lion attacks?? Mountain lions in Omaha, NE?? Is that because their wek gene pool (only losers are breeding) have been hunted to extinction, or because they are following the abundant deer supply to where the deer live... and on and on and on.... I am glad I read the article in a Doctor's office ... I can rest assured for another 20 years that Newsweek remains a haven for insular, poorly researched, liberal, and yes, just downright stupid articles.

In ???It???s Survival of the Weak and Scrawny??? (January 12, 2009), Lily Huang suggests that by killing males with large antlers and horns, hunters are leaving North America???s big game species populated by runty genetic ???losers.??? The facts don???t bear this out. Worse, Ms. Huang never mentions the real threat to our continent???s grandest wildlife. Ms. Huang???s theory of evolution has several flaws. Unlike animals in closed systems like zoos, farms and high-fence ???hunting preserves,??? wild bulls, bucks and rams move large distances to breed, keeping populations dynamic. Too, females contribute half the genes--some recessive, some dominant. Sons often dwarf their fathers. Counter to Ms. Huang???s premise, the majority of hunters are happy to kill female animals or the first legal bull or buck they encounter.
Huang gives no coin to current careful stewardship of wildlife and wild lands and what it has done to create healthy populations with mature males. Yet records of ???trophy??? animals kept by the Boone and Crockett and Pope and Young clubs for more than a century reflect a meteoric rise over the past 30 years (over 200 percent for nearly all big game, 190 percent for elk). Just last fall, a bull elk killed in south-central Utah shattered the previous world record for non-typical American elk.
Ms. Huang invokes Theodore Roosevelt, noting wistfully that ???just 100 years after his expeditions for elk and bighorn sheep, many of the kind of magnificent trophies he routinely captured are becoming rare.??? When Roosevelt became President in 1901, fewer than 100,000 elk remained in America, down from an estimated 10 million when Columbus landed. But today, more than a million elk thrive from coast to coast. Our North American model of wildlife conservation works. Hunters, through voluntary taxes on sporting goods, license fees and support of nonprofit conservation groups???not to mention well regulated bag limits???have been the primary engine driving this remarkable wildlife renaissance.
North America is unique in the world in that every citizen is free to hunt abundant big game and birds in conditions which meet the full spirit of fair chase. Done well, hunting offers powerful bonds to the land and provides the healthiest meat on the planet.
The true threat to America???s wildlife is not hunting but rampant loss of habitat. America???s human population has gone from 76 million in 1900 to 303 million now, with massive impacts on our wild places. Every day, houses, strip malls and roads overrun another 5,000 acres of elk country. And, as Roosevelt said, ???We have gotten past the stage, my fellow citizens, where we are to be pardoned if we treat any part of our country as something to be skinned for the use of the present generation, whether it be the forest, the water, the scenery. Whatever it is, handle it so your children???s children get the benefit of it.???
I encourage everyone to heed TR???s words and put shoulders to the wh

In ???It???s Survival of the Weak and Scrawny??? (January 12, 2009), Lily Huang suggests that by killing males with large antlers and horns, hunters are leaving North America???s big game species populated by runty genetic ???losers.??? The facts don???t bear this out. Worse, Ms. Huang never mentions the real threat to our continent???s grandest wildlife. Ms. Huang???s theory of evolution has several flaws. Unlike animals in closed systems like zoos, farms and high-fence ???hunting preserves,??? wild bulls, bucks and rams move large distances to breed, keeping populations dynamic. Too, females contribute half the genes--some recessive, some dominant. Sons often dwarf their fathers. Counter to Ms. Huang???s premise, the majority of hunters are happy to kill female animals or the first legal bull or buck they encounter.

Huang gives no coin to current careful stewardship of wildlife and wild lands and what it has done to create healthy populations with mature males. Yet records of ???trophy??? animals kept by the Boone and Crockett and Pope and Young clubs for more than a century reflect a meteoric rise over the past 30 years (over 200 percent for nearly all big game, 190 percent for elk). Just last fall, a bull elk killed in south-central Utah shattered the previous world record for non-typical American elk.

Ms. Huang invokes Theodore Roosevelt, noting wistfully that ???just 100 years after his expeditions for elk and bighorn sheep, many of the kind of magnificent trophies he routinely captured are becoming rare.??? When Roosevelt became President in 1901, fewer than 100,000 elk remained in America, down from an estimated 10 million when Columbus landed. But today, more than a million elk thrive from coast to coast. Our North American model of wildlife conservation works. Hunters, through voluntary taxes on sporting goods, license fees and support of nonprofit conservation groups???not to mention well regulated bag limits???have been the primary engine driving this remarkable wildlife renaissance.

North America is unique in the world in that every citizen is free to hunt abundant big game and birds in conditions which meet the full spirit of fair chase. Done well, hunting offers powerful bonds to the land and provides the healthiest meat on the planet.

The true threat to America???s wildlife is not hunting but rampant loss of habitat. America???s human population has gone from 76 million in 1900 to 303 million now, with massive impacts on our wild places. Every day, houses, strip malls and roads overrun another 5,000 acres of elk country. And, as Roosevelt said, ???We have gotten past the stage, my fellow citizens, where we are to be pardoned if we treat any part of our country as something to be skinned for the use of the present generation, whether it be the forest, the water, the scenery. Whatever it is, handle it so your children???s children get the benefit of it.???

I encourage everyone to heed TR???s words and put shoulders to t

I find it interesting that the caption states that Roosevelt and a companion are shown with kudus. There's more eland horn in that photo than kudo. So how much of the rest of the story is accurate? It reads like just more anti-hunting propaganda by a writer who doesn't understand that there would be ZERO wildlife to discuss around the world without hunters and hunting. Note the crafty use of biological quotes. If she's worth her salt--if Newsweek is worth its salt--they're take a look at the trillions in revenue used by biologists and wildlife managers... they'll at least give some consideration to the real heavy lifters of wildlife conservation.

I believe there is some truth to this article. However, state fish and game are helping by regulating the numbers of and the size of animals taken. There is very little mention in this article about how food sources affect the population as well as fires and mother nature in general. Oh, and how about those wolves that will take down the largest of a breed and just leaving it lay. The wolves have made the largest impact on big game. Don't forget about urban sprawl, last year the Boise, ID police department had to shoot a cow elk running through town. As an avid sportsman I don't go after the largest of the heard you can't eat the horns, and considering the size of the herds today your lucky to even fill your tag.

It seems funny how people can knock down and try to be experts in a field that they know nothing about. Next time you post a article I would suggest you do your research. First off, large game animals are typically the older males in the herd and are coming to the ends of their life spans. Therefore making them LESS likely to reproduce through intercourse than a younger male of the species because of their potency decreases with age. I suggest you talk to a wildlife biologist before you right an article putting down hunters in the world with no research or documents to back up your claim. Its funny how people who have never hunted seem to be experts in this county. Sportsmen are the only ones in the world who deserve the right to run the conservation efforts, not some pencil pusher behind a desk that has never even stepped into the woods. Sportsmen Conservation groups have successfully repopulated and grown species of animals in the world that nature and human civilization had almost completely destroyed. The only difference between a hunter killing an animal and a person living in a large city that pollutes the earth is a hunter will kill less animals and have less of an impact of the environment than the destruction of their habitat and killing millions of animals from starvation, but no one ever seems to look at that side of the issue. Do they?

"It's why I was always uncomfortable in conservation organizations run by "sportsmen"."

But is it better to have "conservation organisations" run by people sitting at desks, and all they do is protest? Or believe "animals are human too"?

YES! It's what I've always felt. Modern hunters are not like natural predators (as they often claim) because they do not select their prey based on the same characteristics. It's why I was always uncomfortable in conservation organizations run by "sportsmen".

"Posted By: picosmith @ 01/07/2009 3:33:41 PM
In order for a species to survive in this modern world, its best bet is to have economic value. The highest value in the current environment comes from sport hunting???usually. That being the case, it pays to let critters grow up and get big.

For the record, the heads in the picture are not kudu, as the caption says, but eland. And big ones. I believe the other hunter with TR, is, I believe, his son, Kermitt."

Pico

Spot on with both of your comments.

The heads in the photo are Lord Derby Eland.

It is sad how the average reader of newsweek has to be so poorly informed about hunting and evolution, as Lily Haung has so intrepidly done. The evolution of us humans has permanently altered habitats that has caused many other species to become rare (I prefer medium rare) . Including many game species and their natural predators ie the big bad wolves and bears. What Lily misses the most is that trophy hunters are targeting the individuals that are allready past their prime. They are getting kicked out of bed by the younger stronger individuals of their own species. In fact hunters give these "big racks" a humane death as opposed to the humaniacs like Lily who would rather they starved to death. Mother nature ie evolution is cruel and not to be discussed at the sushi bars and coffee house habitats frequented by Lily and her readers.
I could elaborate with many facts, but the sheep like behaviour of the average humaniac, wouldnt listen anyway. See you at the sushi bar
ps most of the fish at your bar are illegally caught and endangered, but thats ok because you didnt kill it..... right
Doug Anderson

Hunter have not been taking trophies with high-powered rifles for 2 million years, they've been catching anything slow enough to kill and eat. Antler, tusk and horn shrinkage may not be an easy thought but empirical studies have absolutely established it with many species including bighorns and elephants (as mentioned).

It still irks me to read statements from people who believe they know where and how creatures should be evolving, what animals should look like. It's as bad, if not worse than the eugenics ideologies of the early 1900's. Look at how these "pure breeds" are doing today. Diseased and sickly, unable to chew their own food and all caused by our failed understanding of what makes a strong, healthy looking, animal. The process of evolution is extremely complex, too complex for cursory judgments on strength and weakness. Who are you to decide what's natural? The hunters alleged unnatural acts have been going on for well over 2 million years. Humanoids??? hunting for antlers and tusks is not a new phenomenon. What Mrs. Huang is proposing, is a new selectivity born from the mind and not from the world. This would be a new search for a pure breed but this time experimenting on wild creatures. This article also terribly confuses the definition of evolution in common usage, with the Darwin's Theory of Evolution, which are two entirely different concepts. Evolution in common usage can mean change in a specified direction. Last time I checked Darwin's Theory does not specify any specific direction (bigger, stronger, faster) as being preferable. Natural selection is not determined by one or two attributes. If that were the case, why not have only 50 genes? Why all the wasted space? Why aren't all species huge monsters? Often those in a species that thrive in growth periods, fail miserably in the inevitable rough patches. Alpha males in some cases have been more prone to stress disorders and illness for example. Time would be better spent protecting habitat and promoting hunter involvement in sustainability.

It???s sad how easily the mainstream media can be duped into accepting pseudo-science as evidence for an agenda-driven conclusion. The ???researchers???, and I use that term very loosely here, apparently base their conclusions on several false assumptions. First, they assume that animals with the genetic potential to exhibit ???trophy??? characteristics are removed from the population at a rate higher than that of their recruitment into the population. This is highly unlikely, as any deer hunter can tell you that most animals brought to bag are of average stature or less. The second false assumption is that the animals with the genetic potential to exhibit ???trophy??? characteristics have somehow had their genetic potential removed from the population by their demise. False, because by the time they are old enough to exhibit ???trophy??? characteristics, they would easily have had several years of reproduction behind them and their lineage would continue in the population. A far more likely reason for the alleged decline in ???trophy??? characteristics would be a nutritional deficit brought about by human influence on habitats that prevent the animals from reaching their full genetic potential. Legal hunting reduces the impact of a population on its habitat, thereby reducing competition for limited resources and improving the possibility that a given animal can exhibit its full genetic potential.

The commnets about elk are false. The record books are overrun with more entriesand larger size elk trophies in the past decade than back in Roosevelt's time. Elephants have adapted to poaching, not to hunting. Whitetail deer are the most pursued animal in the United States and the size of the population and the truly outstanding trophy racks are continuing to fill the record books. The reference to one population of sheep on a single mountain is not indicative of hunting pressure and the species response throughout the work of hunting.

This article misses looking at programs in the United Stats like Quality Deer Management, which promote the health of the herd and help produce more mature bucks with good-sized racks. These programs have been a huge success and are run by hunters. Another point: the new world record bull elk was killed this past season on public land. Also, the numbers of enormous trophy moose are on the upswing, and every year tons of trophy deer are taken, and these are just a few examples. This article ignores the fact most hunters HUNT FOR MEAT and that the number of trophies killed compared to non-trophies is very small. Take Montana, where you can kill two does and only one buck, and where every winter there are special late-season cow elk hunts. To write, "most wildlife departments managing hunting harvests simply count the heads each year and decide how many to let hunters bag without thinking about genes," is patently false. The genes, and big racks, are very important to bringing in out-of-state money in license fees--departments pay attention to the money. Certainly not all states are as responsible about wildlife populations and hunting regulations as they should be, but the much bigger issue there is usually outright neglect, as one sees in California. There is a strong anti-hunting bent to this article and it's negligent that Ms. Huang did not even mention QDMA or give a single example of state department that manages responsibly through hunting and show how that is done. There are many.

The last two commentators are arguing over semantics instead of looking into the meat and potatoes of the article. The bottom line is that humans are influencing evolution at an unnaturally accelerated rate, to the detriment of the animals being hunted. They are eliminating, through over use, the very things they desire. As with most resources that we use, we are not mindful of their proper management until the adverse affects are in our faces. Of course, there are many hunters who persue their game for meat, and some who do it for trophies and pride. As outdoorsmen and conservationists, we need to examine the way we use these resources and manage them to ensure healthy populations of game, both for our sake and that of the animals.