Landscapes & Letters
Paul McCarney
Archives
Wolves sometimes stand more as an embodiment of ideological narratives and politics than a species on the landscape. We often talk about wolves-the-symbol rather than wolves-the-species. When this happens, people and organizations frame wolves in terms of economic and political interests rather than the biological aspects of the species and their role on the landscape. Questions about wolf reintroductions bring together a complex intersection of biology and social values. If we can… Read More
Conservation involves complicated layers that must be navigated. It involves a diverse set of voices, nuanced motivations, and vastly different ideas about the best types of programs and policies. Inevitably, there is a great deal of push and pull and disagreement about the right kinds of decision-making in conservation and what constitutes a morally right way to approach conservation. Bounties and killing contests occupy a contradictory space in the North American conservation… Read More
Among the many things that draw hunters into the field to pursue new species, curiosity is perhaps one of the simplest and most ancient. There is an exciting sense of curiosity that drives hunters to want to continue to experience new landscapes, natural phenomena, and species. While we are certainly driven but such primordial motivations to hunt, we also commonly express less practical, but equally human, reflections about the many considerations that… Read More
It is a generally accepted truth among hunters that heavy winters with deep snow are bad for deer, making it especially difficult for them to evade predators like wolves and coyotes. As I was looking for some recent science that might be interesting to hunters, I came across a new study about boreal woodland caribou that sheds some new light on the effects of snow depth and wolf predation on calf recruitment…. Read More
We need wolves, bears, and large cats on the North American landscape. They belong here, and neither the landscapes we call home nor our own cultures would be the same without them. It’s not only proper management practice to protect the place and role of predators in North America, it’s both a patriotic act and a moral responsibility.
Paul McCarney