I was that moronic kid who
would do anything my brother dared me to, even if that involved,
say, taking an ice ball to the face (“You flinched! You
lose!”). I’m over the need for my big brother’s approval, but
I still love a challenge.
I took up one recently, after
reading an interview in the Houston Chronicle with Logan Magruder,
president of the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain
States. He complained that energy developers had gotten a bum rap
in the press, and that “in reality, the producing community in the
Rocky Mountain area has done a tremendous job coexisting with
wildlife and, in many cases, enhancing the overall habitat.”
He also said that if you looked at hunting statistics,
“you’ll see the yield is actually up. The number of animals
harvested per hunter, and the number of hunters themselves, has
increased over the past three years, while at the same time, the
number of wells drilled has increased.”
Since my husband,
who could be categorized as an avid if not obsessive hunter, has
long tired of my questions — “So, do you think he means that more
animals die from being hunted than die from having their habitat
drilled?” — I decided to take Magruder up on that challenge
to examine hunting statistics.
The first hunting
authority I called snorted when I read him Magruder’s quote. He
then gave me the names of other folks who might have something more
constructive to say. Bob Elderain, who is with the Colorado Mule
Deer Association, said that deer have been particularly bothered by
so many new roads. But what about those pictures of herds hanging
out around a drill rig? I asked.
“What no one picks up is
those animals are never grazing or bedding down, chewing their
cud,” Elderain said. “They’re all bunched up, on alert.”
“Deer hunting as we’ve known it isn’t going to exist,” he says.
“It’s going to come down to road hunting.” Elderain has been
hunting in western Colorado since he and his wife moved to the area
in 1974. To be sure, he’s lost some of his hunting spots to the
maze of rigs and roads, but, he says, it’s the outfitters who are
hit hardest: “People aren’t going to pay good money to an outfitter
when anyone can go out there and drive right up to a herd.”
Well, what about Wyoming? Jeff Obrecht at Wyoming Game
and Fish was happy to share his state’s statistics, and I looked
through data from the past 10 years for six big game species. For
both mule deer and white tailed deer, the number of hunters and the
number of animals harvested have increased. But for moose, bighorn
sheep and elk, the number of hunters and number of harvests have
all decreased. And while the harvests and number of hunters for
antelope increased since 1997, the 2006 numbers fell below those
from 1992. So, in Wyoming, Magruder’s statement isn’t true for any
big-game species other than deer.
And what does it really
mean, that hunting yields are up? T.O. Smith, energy coordinator
for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, points out that his agency is
most concerned with the state of wildlife populations, not the
success of hunters. In Wyoming, for instance, mule deer populations
have declined by 46 percent, and Smith said it’s undisputed
“that coalbed methane and deep gas drilling in Wyoming are
causing declines in populations. We’re always happy to see hunter
populations up, and to see they are having successful hunts, but we
want to see that occurring when we have healthy populations of
animals.”
It helps to look at the issue with some
degree of balance, he added. “You can’t be overly pessimistic and
point the finger just at energy development. But it’s overly
optimistic to say, ‘Because we have higher harvest rates, the
populations are fine.’
“There were hundreds of
thousands of bison being harvested on the Plains, (and) people
would have thought the bison populations were doing great.”
So, there you have it, Mr. Magruder. Now, I dare you to
work with hunters, conservationists and communities to find better
ways to coexist with wildlife. And for that matter, I double-dog
dare the press to stop letting industry off the hook when it
trumpets misleading statistics.
Laura Paskus is
a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country
News in Paonia, Colorado (hcn.org). She writes in Albuquerque, New
Mexico.
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