Use hunting to manage wildlife
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Editor,
This is a letter to U.S. Sen. Jon Tester and U.S. Rep. Max Baucus.
You and the rest of the U.S. Congress, and especially the Sportsmen’s Coalition, need to pass federal legislation allowing the legal hunting of wild wolves and bison within the boundaries of our national parks and the legal hunting of excess wildlife populations of such animals as elk in Rocky Mountain National Park.
I’ve spoken to many people in Congress and various executive branch administrations about this concept. I’ve spoken to you and Jon Tester about this concept. I’ve spoken to several U.S. Secretaries of the Interior about this and their immediate deputies.
Fair Chase, as conceived by President Theodore Roosevelt and his small band of friends in the late 1800s and early 1900s, must be the guidelines for hunting within the boundaries of national parks and other federal land systems where hunting is currently not allowed.
Shooting of excess animals by sharpshooters is disgusting and wasteful. Hunters like me would gladly pay a license fee for the chance to hunt in a Fair Chase situation for wild bison, wild elk, wild wolves or other wildlife that need their populations controlled. The money from the sale of hunting licenses could be targeted to help those species stay under control.
I’d be happy to talk to both of you about this and to anyone else within the U.S. Congress — Republican, Democrat or Independent — who would like to consider this unique concept of wildlife management. Naturally, I also support the selling of hunting licenses and the management of the drawings for those limited-draw hunts to fall into the hands of state game and fish agencies that would take some of the money from the sale of hunting licenses to administer these programs as is done for other species in states where great interest in that species exists like moose, bighorn sheep and Rocky Mountain goat.
Hunting is a viable wildlife management tool, Max and Jon.
In the spirit of Theodore Roosevelt, Ding Darling, George Bird Grinnell, Aldo Leopold, Horace Albright, John Lacey and all the early American conservationists who believed in balanced natural resource harvesting, I say, the wildlife and its habitat cannot speak, so I must and so must we all.
Susan Campbell Reneau
Missoula
