The Fat Bird, Ugly Dog Podcast
The goal of this podcast is to present alternate viewpoints on falconry. Topics covered range from training philosophy, husbandry, and health of birds and bird dogs to conservation and management of raptors, their main prey species, and the respective habitat that they rely on. In addition, I’ll cover-off themes related to hunter ethics, fair chase, and access to public and private land. I’ll outline efforts that falconers can make to contribute to all of these topics of conversation.
The Fat Bird, Ugly Dog Podcast
33. John Organ on the "North American Model of Wildlife Conservation"
In this Episode I am joined by John Organ, Chief Emeritus of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit Program, to discuss the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. John begins by telling us about the people that were responsible for consolidating the model, He then describes the ecological and historical context that ultimately led to modern wildlife management. We go back to the late Pleistocene to provide a sense of what the mega-faunal community looked like prior to the arrival of humans on the continent. We then step forward in time to the wildlife fauna of the North American frontier, and outline the main species that were hunted, exploited, and those that were driven to extinction or near extinction. John tells us about the early advocates of wildlife conservation, and describes their major legislative and institutional milestones. We then turn to detailing the seven tenets of the North American Model. We close-out the episode discussing what John sees as the three biggest threats to hunting, and given that hunters make up about 5% of the population in the NA, and that it would almost certainly be outlawed if the question of its legitimacy were put to a simple referendum,I ask John what he would advise hunters to do to encourage support for hunting in the non-hunting community.