The press and public response to Raincoast’s purcase of the hunting rights to a big chunk of the coastal BC forest (see blog article below) has been generally positive or at least nuetral. There was however this little piece from some named guy called Eric de Place who works for some organization called Northwest Environment Watch and publishes online for something called Grist:

“To save a species, shoot here“.

He claims therein that the money Raincoast spent, which was certainly substantial, especially for an environmental NGO, might have better gone to other conservation strategies. He argues that hunting is not necessarily bad for species, an interesting hypothesis which he at least makes sound less loony than it’s first impression, and that it can actually lead to species rebound thanks to societal outcomes of the economic imperative to conserve commercially hunted species.

I notice that Raincoast has now responded in the form of this extensive reply by Executive Director Chris Genovali, which qoutes a number of Raincoast’s associated scientists and such:

“Raincoast responds to Eric de Place“.

I don’t feel like I have a solid enough grasp of the numbers to accept either side without qualification, but I will point out that Raincoast has a tremendous science program which serves as the bedrock of their advocacy efforts, and I therefore suspect they are in a better position to judge specific quantative questions (i.e. Grizzly population growth v. hunting rates) than Some Random Guy from Washington, although I would be interested to hear more about how much money and conservation effort does come from hunting advocacy groups. de Place mentions that this is a common practice, and sites Ducks Unlimited, but doesn’t offer any concrete examples for bears on the Pacific coast. To be fair, he probably whipped off his article to respond promptly to the news coverage without a lot of time for research. To be fair.

Another point regarding numbers and specifics: the impression that I get is that nobody has a very strong grasp on bear population levels and rates. That quite probably includes the Canadian government departments responsible for conducting ‘science-based evaluations…meant to keep the population in balance’, despite their stellar track record for stewarding the populations of endagered species under their control. Hence the precautionary principle would wisely be invoked, and we should in short get the guns the hell out of there. So thumbed noses to the guy from Northwest Environment Watch, and redoubled props to Raincoast.

The argument that the money could have been spent on other conservation initiatives is a bit suspect too, considering Raincoast presumably raised these funds specifically for this project and it’s not at all clear that they would have been spent on conservation otherwise.

I will however attach one qualificaton of my own to the total success of this project: this “innovative and precedent setting” approach to conservation reminds me of what Michael Walker had to say in The Corporation about assigning market value to, in his words as I remember them, “every square foot of water and air” in order to preserve the environment. Apparently, his philosophy was borne out in this case: the lives of trophy animals did in fact have a dollar amount assigned to them ($1 350 000), and consequently Raincoast was able to raise money to buy those lives by making a strong enough case to convince people that it was worth their dollars. The lives were bought and hence protected. An argument could be made that all this gives succor and aid to the enemy. Um, shudder.