Samuel Bettlach- Source 1

A)    My main question has changed a bit, and I will be focusing on the controversy of hunting around the globe as a legitimate means of conservation.  For this post though, my first focus will be on hunting effects on the population management, in specific, nature running its core or hunting being useful as a management technique?

B)    Heffelfinger, James R., Valerius Geist, and William Wishart. "The Role Of Hunting In North American Wildlife Conservation." International Journal Of Environmental Studies 70.3 (2013): 399-413. Environment Complete. Web. 1 Oct. 2015.

 Summarize:

Within this article there was a wide range of ideas and thoughts on hunting as a conservation method.  For this question though, I think it best to focus on the beginning section of this writing.  At the beginning of this article, subtitles including "managing animal abundance" get right to the issue at hand.  This article gives some pros to hunting in that it manages in many cases wild animal and human interactions that do not end well.  On the counter side to this, the article does note that overpopulation wouldn’t be nearly as much of an idea or problem if the predator populations were not being pursued also.  Tied into this population control, the article mentions a bit about how males of most species are hunted more heavily then females, thus resulting in thrown off ratios then would naturally be occurring. This ratio problem could lead to concerns about delays in breeding rates, and thus producing smaller weaker offspring that would suffer tremendously and most likely suffer death trying to make it through the winter.  Picking out the prized, and usually the oldest males in a population is a well known practice in hunting.  Could it lead to a genetic decline and thus problems with a species and ecosystem?  With the better genes being shot and killed by hunters, the potential of inferior or lesser genes have the potential to continue breeding and making it on to the next generation.  These are the important points that I have grabbed from this article, there are many more points that will later on help me develop my thesis when it come to other questions.

Think:

After looking at this source, I have come to kind of think about the hunting world that I have so long been subjected to.  I personally do not have a problem with hunting, but I am starting to really see a side to non-hunters, or a side to smaller harvest rates. This article, though not more then 3 pages for the portion that I am using for this question, gives a good amount of insight to the controversy of hunting being used as a conservation technique.  One of the new ideas that I haven’t always been thinking about in hunting, is the pursuit of the biggest and best looking, or antlered animal.  Age structure I believe is where hunting should occur as a conservation technique.  One animal might be more presentable to a hunter, but the older deer should be the ones harvested.  The most outstanding topic, that I have never even heard talked about was the idea of ratio problems that lead to a delay in breeding, thus causing problems to the offspring.  This article has opened my eyes in way that gives me understanding that deer hunting in this article, can be done successfully for conservation.  With that being said, I understand that the current hunting practices of many need to be changed in order to make this conservation strong and noticeable. 

Question and Plan:

The new questions that have raised from this article stem mostly from conservation and what it really means to conserve the environment. I really need to look into conservation and know more about what data and ideas of conservation play a role to the populations of animals.  As my research continues on, for this topic in particular, I need to go more in depth on one or more of these topics that I covered in the summary portion.  I now have a starting point, and there really needs to be some more direction to population management.  My new direction for this paper, at this point anyways starts with that hunting is not and overall bad thing.  For all I know, I might find a lot wrong with hunting by the end of this and hate it.  For now, though, I would like move my attention to make hunting a more well known practice.  I believe that hunting isn’t communicated to many people, and if there was some sort of education about hunting, it may bring on a whole new idea to this conservation.  Conservation when thinking about how I have used it, to most would be the process of sustaining, preserving, or building up of animal populations and environment.  When I think conservation for this paper, I would like people to think of conservation and protection of more then just the animal populations I mention hunters pursue.  Conservation for this paper will mean a well being for people, the animal population, and even potentially farm animals.  This research is leading me in many new and exciting ideas, I just hope that as I look up articles that they all can fit together correctly in order to identify if hunting can really be used as a conservation technique?