Had I not grown up in a rural American town where hunting was a very common activity among the residents, I doubt I would have ever understood very much about it. Even though my family contained very few hunters (in comparative proportion to those of many of our neighbors), simply living day-to-day, year-in and year-out among so many hunters – of both mammals and birds – was sufficient to acquire an understanding of both the mechanics of the activity, as well as the ethics and psychology of it.
Not so long ago, commercial harvesting of birds and mammals was more akin to that of commercial seafood harvesting. More species were allowed to be hunted and sold into the marketplace, either for food or for the use of some part of them for some other purpose, as well as captured captured alive for various other uses.
This week in his Sunday book review, Mark takes up “When the Last Lion Roars; The Rise and Fall of the King of the Beasts,” Sara Evan’s forthcoming book from Bloomsbury. He seems quite pleased with what he read in it; particularly the way in which the author approaches the high level of complexity that surrounds the conservation of charismatic megafauna in the modern world.
In light of the recent decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to lift the ban on importing “sport” hunted trophies of elephants from Zimbabwe and Zambia, it seems that a short overview of some recent worthwhile books about elephants is in order – in case any readers of The Well-read Naturalist should find themselves […]