Trophy Hunting Does Not Impact Genetics, Part 2.
Reprinted from Column in Morgantown Dominion Post, Febr 2009. Last week we looked at the situation relative to the breeding behavior of antlered mammals, refuting an article ("It’s Survival of the Weak and Scrawny") written in the January 12 Newsweek magazine. To summarize what was said about deer, as an example, hunters take only the biggest bucks and since these bucks do the breeding, this means that genetically inferior animals now do the breeding. I find no truth is this sentence. Hunters don’t harvest all the big bucks, in fact, they harvest very few. Secondly, the biggest bucks do not do all the breeding, in fact some do none of the breeding. Truth is that breeding is spread out among many different-aged, different-sized bucks. In fact, new studies conclude that "there is no clear relationship between antler size and breeding success." One other point on deer that I didn’t mention last week that relates to this question on genetics. Bucks don’t stay where they were born. Most disperse to new areas, sometimes as far as 25 miles from their birth place. The result? Genetic variability increases. Let’s move on to what was said about wild sheep. The article quotes a study done on Ram Mountain in Alberta, Canada, where 30 years of data showed that there was a decline of 25 percent in the size of the horns and both the males and female sheep got smaller in size. The article goes on to say that bigger horned males sire larger offspring, and the bigger horned males win the fights with other males and thus do the breeding. They note that hunting season takes out the big males before they get a chance to breed, so the smaller, younger males do the breeding, leading to inferior offspring. ’ve done some research on this Alberta study. My twin brother who was a wildlife professor at the University of Alberta for 35 years provided me some research and I dug out some other research via the Internet. It seems that this 30-year research project has been subject to tons of criticism by wildlife scientists. In fact very few scientists support the conclusions of this study. Dr. Valerius Geist is one of Canada’s most highly regarded wildlife scientists. He notes that taking trophy animals has been going on since the Upper Paleolithic times where cave painters chose trophies as their subjects. And in Medieval Central Europe, the biggest red stags were targeted by the nobility. Indeed this harvesting did lower the antler quality of red stages for many years. But around the time of the second World War, there was a desire to get the trophy antlered stags back, so protein rich feeds were provided to the stags. Habitat quality was improved, and within a few generations, huge stags were again being produced. The conclusion was that declines in body size and antler size was not permanent, and could be reversed. The sheep biologist for the state of Alaska also criticized the conclusions of the sheep study, and cited research showing that on Ram Mountain, there was density-driven nutritional scarcity and that caused the sheep to decline in horn and body size. In other words, there were too many sheep for the habitat, and they were suffering nutritional problems. That’s basic wildlife management. He then goes on to say to wildlife researchers, "Be circumspect in communications with the press because what comes out isn’t going to look very much like what you put in." In other words, the sheep researchers should have been more careful about drawing the genetics conclusions from their data, because anti-hunting writers would give it an anti twist. He wrote this several years ago and, relative to the Newsweek article, it is pretty prophetic. Biologists in Montana also checked in on the conclusions from this sheep research and quoted another study on sheep that found that younger rams sired 50% of the ewes. Even when older rams were there, younger rams sired ewes. Same results we’ve noted for whitetails. The Montana biologists noted that indeed the potential for horn size is tied to genes, but to reach that potential one has to look at environmental issues that limit horn growth. Weather, habitat, disease, all limit the genetic potential of sheep to achieve big horns. Wildlife managers know that killing big male sheep can reduce horn size because there are fewer older rams left. Maybe that’s why state and province managers limit harvest to 3-10 percent of available rams, and that’s been going on for many years. Maybe that's why in many places you cannot shoot a ram younger than seven or eight years old. I found other studies that refute the conclusions cited by the Newsweek article, but enough of that. However, when media folks take such research and twist the words of the authors to suit their own agenda, this misleads citizens. When large number of urban citizens read such articles, they get upset with hunters, and they then get politicians involved and laws get changed that do harm to wildlife. It’s happened with mountain lion hunting on the West coast, with grizzly bear hunting in British Columbia, and the apparent motive of this Newsweek article was also aimed to stop certain forms of hunting. Hunters pay for almost all the research done on wild sheep. The Wild Sheep Foundation and Safari Club International pay for almost all research done on sheep habitat, disease, etc. There is no question that without these hunting organizations, in many regions our wild sheep would be in major trouble. The hunters in these organizations contribute millions of dollars every year to help guarantee the future survival of our wild sheep. These sheep are elegant, wonderful animals, and without hunters and hunting organizations, it’s hard to tell where they would be.
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