So, we have previous articles that discussed about the importance of hunting. Not just in the past, but in also the present. In the past, hunting was a necessity for hunter-gatherers to survive, as things like agriculture, and consequently, farms and crops did not exist yet. There weren’t any cows standing by that they could eat at any time, so they had to do it the hard way by actually looking for, chasing down, then killing their prey. This naturally built up their bodies as they needed to be athletic to keep their endurance up when chasing animals for long distances.
On the modern side of things, hunting serves a wider variety of purposes: Some people still use it to obtain their next meals, but others use it as a form of sport or to trim down the animal population of any species that might be growing a bit too fast for comfort.
At the same time, however, hunting can fall into a pitfall and if we’re not careful, we may end up harming the environment even more than we are helping it.
Population Control
As mentioned earlier, one of the benefits of hunting is that it helps lower the population of potentially problematic animals like deer or rabbits, as for instance, the latter can especially multiply extremely quickly and terrorize the plants and soil that are near while also attracting a good number of predators to them.
But this type of benefit can instead turn into a detriment when taken to an extreme. People aren’t always content with hunting mere bucks, even if their heads are big enough to mount as a trophy back home. Sometimes they want to go for bigger and badder game, so they go off the beaten path and go for animals that may not even be a problem, population-wise. This occurs mostly in places where there is little to no regulation in hunting, where instead hunters are left to their own devices and goodwill. Unfortunately, not all humans hunt for a noble cause, and may instead do so for profit. As a result, it might instead turn into the opposite problem: Overhunting will instead kill off a good amount of the population of a species of animal as more hunters decide to hunt animals that have a healthy population.
Population decline from hunting
The impact on the environment due to overhunting can be immense, but one of the most notable effects of such is the disappearances of certain animals in parts of the world over time as their population overall grows smaller and smaller. This can lead to certain animal species becoming endangered, such as the American bison and the rhinoceros, but in the worst-case scenarios, there is also the possibility of overhunting becoming the cause of extinction for an animal.
Sadly, there has been historic precedent of overhunting being the cause of extinction for some animals. Giant lemurs and elephant birds in Madagascar, moas in New Zealand, and giant kangaroos in Australia are just some of the animals that have been driven to extinction thanks to human overhunting. This has been a problem for quite some time, even dating centuries back. Since the 17th century, to be more specific. Overhunting has been seen as one of the biggest causes for animal extinction, and the World Wildlife Fund reports that overhunting is responsible for 23% of animal extinctions.
Not just on land
Land animals aren’t the only ones in danger of overhunting. Those that live in the sea are in a lot of danger of hunting as well. Whales, for instance, have 6 out of 13 great whale species classified as endangered or vulnerable due to whaling. While whaling has become illegal in may parts around the world, some countries still practice it.
Sharks are another victim of overhunting. Shark finning is a practice that certain fishermen utilize when hunting sharks. This involves stripping a shark of its fins, then throwing the rest of its body back into the water. This is due to the fact that the other parts of the shark are not as valuable in the market, and thus, wasted space on the boat. Unfortunately for the shark, this means that they don’t die swiftly or peacefully. They struggle to swim while bleeding profusely, either dying of suffocating or dying from blood loss, neither of which is a particularly nice way to go. Indeed, despite their status as an apex predator in the water, they are considered an endangered species.
Wrapping up
Hunting has its own benefits for humans and the environment, and this article isn’t meant to guilt-trip you to putting away the bow or rifle for good.
But it is important to always keep in mind not just yourself when you hunt, but also how your hunting can affect the environment and even the world at large. That is what this article seeks to accomplish, that the hunting world has its own dark side, and if simply left unchecked, will do even more harm to the world in the long run than whatever good it can do in keeping annoying rabbits from infesting the forest.
Keeping down the deer population is good but hunting a rare bird down to extinction just because it looks pretty is a terrible thing to do.