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The appended article, titled "How public wildlife became something for sale" speaks narrowly of the commodification of wildlife and the transformation of traditional ethical hunting into outfitted, pay-to-bag, trophy-taking. It speaks of the diminution of wildlife that has resulted from this transformation and is an interesting article even when read in a vacuum.
 The article becomes more valuable when you realize that the concepts presented are applicable to more than the taking of wildlife. It becomes more meaningful when you appreciate that in pointing an accusing finger at Texas and its policies, which are said to be the worst in the nation, Jim Posewitz is pointing to the State and policies which, for the past 7 years, have served as the model for privatization of virtually everything, including everything associated with the "great outdoors". It has served as the chief model for the transformation of outdoor recreation on our public lands into the marketized, pay-to-play fee-asco that exists today.
The harm which has already resulted from these policies, is incalculable.
Undoing that harm will not occur unless an active public makes it happen.
Scott
"In short, the very scarcity of wild places, reacting with the mores of advertising and promotion, tends to defeat any deliberate effort to prevent their growing still more scarce."
-Aldo Leopold
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How public wildlife became something for sale
By MARK HENCKEL - Gazette Outdoor Editor
Wildlife management in North America has been based on more than a
century of inclusion between the hunting public and landowners. But
that has been changing over the past 30 years in Montana.
The so-called North American model of wildlife management began with a
U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1842 that declared that fish and wildlife
are owned by the states and their people as a public trust. It also got
a big boost from Theodore Roosevelt during his presidency, when he
began protecting land and conserving wildlife, said Jim Posewitz,
founder of the Helena-based Orion, The Hunter's Institute.
"The North American model was first articulated by two Canadian and one
American wildlife biologists - Val Geist and Shawn Mahoney and John
Organ. They published a paper in 2001 called 'Why Hunting Has Defined
the Model of North American Wildlife Conservation,' " Posewitz said.
"A year later, the International Association of Fish and Wildlife
Agencies adopted a white paper approving of the North American model,"
he continued.
"The model has seven basic principles," Posewitz said. "Wildlife is a
public resource. Wildlife was recovered by eliminating the markets for
wildlife. Wildlife can only be allocated by law. Wildlife can only be
killed for a legitimate purpose. Wildlife is considered an
international resource. Science is the proper tool for the discharge of
wildlife policy. And the crown jewel of the seven is the democracy of
hunting. Nobody gets privilege. We're all equal. We all conserve, and
we all share."
Posewitz said the North American model and the Supreme Court's ruling
that wildlife is a public trust are not viewed the same by all people
in all places.
"It spins differently all across the country," he said. "The states
have defended the integrity of the public trust of wildlife to varying
degrees. Some did pretty good. Some have done poorly."
The worst may be Texas, Posewitz said, which has "has indulged property owners with virtually all the privilege they want."
"In Montana, probably the biggest sin is that we've started to
accommodate the commerce of hunting - the outfitter set-aside and the
privileged access to hunting for commercial purposes," he said. "It's
probably not against the law, but it violates the public trust
responsibility that has been such a valuable tool in wildlife
restoration.
"It's a growing problem here. It's the assumption that commercial users
make that their clients are so incompetent that they can't hunt with
the people in common. It comes with public exclusion, and it does not
accept the basic principle that we need to share it in common,"
Posewitz said.
"Their clients have to have this privilege. This privilege is based on
the fact that their clients and the commercial interests have no
appreciation for what it took to stop the slaughter and restore the
game. It was done by all the people. It was based on this common use of
the resource. With this, we repopulated the entire continent with
wildlife."
Over time, the North American model was a process of working together
to restore the land and restore the wildlife that lived on it. It was
done by all groups working together.
"We have a cultural commitment to agriculture," Posewitz said. "We're
perfectly happy to subsidize agriculture, and we should. Nobody squawks
about that. That's a given. But the farmers and ranchers of today
really haven't been exposed to exactly what this public trust is all
about and how it affects wildlife."
Posewitz reached back 70-plus years to illustrate his point.
"During the Dust Bowl, for example, everyone came to the farmers' aid,"
he said. "It was done without question. Funding was made available and
federal and state agencies were formed to restore the land and with
that restoration, the wildlife started to come back. Public hunters and
landowners worked together to transplant herds and restore populations.
Now, they don't remember when there was no wildlife. That generation
has now passed.
"Wildlife has been in the marketplace before, and we damn near wiped out the entire continent," Posewitz said.
Neil Martin, a retired wildlife manager for Montana Fish, Wildlife and
Parks, watched this change to commercial use of wildlife and the
exclusion of the public hunter become more pronounced during his
career. He worked for the agency from 1965 to 1998, with the final 28
years in Miles City.
"It all started in Eastern Montana over two-deer seasons in the mid- to
late 1970s. A lot of the wildlife managers in the other regions cut
back. We didn't do that. We remained with two-deer, either-sex,
either-species seasons," Martin said.
"We had no idea that people would take advantage of this as they did,
and they really piled in here and that included the nonresidents," he
said. "It wasn't so much outfitting at the start - we didn't have that
many outfitters in Eastern Montana then - it was that that some
landowners could take advantage of those numbers of people, and they
could charge fees to hunt. There was some leasing, but that was by
nonresidents. Then outfitting caught on. They were guaranteed a license
and lots of clients.
"Nonresidents were only supposed to get 10 percent of the special
licenses like antelope. There was a time they were getting almost 40
percent of them," Martin said. "That was all associated with paid
hunting, whether it was outfitting or the landowner was getting it.
"By sometime in the '80s, access became a real issue, and it has
continued. We had a great abundance of animals. We had a huge
harvestable supply. But they were just unavailable to the general
public.
"When you get big chunks of land like this closed, it takes some pretty
drastic measures to get that changed," Martin said. "People have to
look at it as bigger than just affecting me and just where I hunt.
Access to hunt and manage wildlife owned by the people is all the
people's problem."
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