As a long time and professionally certified wildlife biologist and senior ecologist, I must use my fifty years of experience to challenge a couple parts of this quote (and I use the term "wildlife" to encompass all wild species, including fish and invertebrates): 1. Compared to previous years, California and other states have been relatively protective of many wildlife resources over the last seventy years, thanks to the organization of state and federal wildlife management agencies and passage of the Pittman-Robertson and Dingel Johnson federal funding programs in the 1930s and 1940s. Granted, this protection has concentrated on harvested species and has been and still is less than adequate for other species (and California has been somewhat less effective overall than many other states). Most of Europe has also been practicing effective habitat and species conservation. However, parts of the rest of the world, e.g., Africa, have been and still are wasteful -- human survival and profit-making are resulting in wasteful use of wildlife habitat and species. We do need more effective and rigid conservation measures for a wider range of species, both in this country and in the whole world. 2. Wildlife biologists have been playing the role of leadership in conserving native fauna and must be credited with taking and promoting intelligent and effective action at the field, state and federal agency levels and at Legislative and congressional levels, resulting in the recovery of many previously at risk species such as elk, pronghorn antelope, bison, cougar, timber wolf, moose, bald eagle and the stabilization of some other species such as northern spotted owl, many salmon and trout species, and several butterfly and mollusk species. 3. Ignorant and destructive popular action (not biologist action) continues to put several species at risk such as greater sage-grouse, California condor, fisher, Oregon meadowlark, and Washington ground squirrel.
Warren W. Aney Senior Wildlife Ecologist 9403 SW 74th Ave. Tigard, OR 97223-9135 (503) 539-1009 -----Original Message----- From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John A. Sent: Monday, 30 January, 2017 12:43 To: [email protected] Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Conservation in the Age of Trump Given the news from the past several weeks, i wanted to share this quote from California Fish & Game, as relevant now as when it was first published: _______ …not only California, but the whole world, has been wasteful of its wild life resources for the last fifty years, and…it is vitally important that the people everywhere understand the urgent necessity for conservation measures even more rigid than those already in force…. On the biologist is laid the role of leadership in the campaign for the preservation of native fauna and on him must blame for ignorant and destructive popular action, legislative or otherwise, inevitably fall. Philip Janney April 1917
