The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly 

In 1990, I had a thought-provoking experience half a world away from my native Michigan. I was in the “Land Down Under” helping to solve wildlife and habitat problems as a consultant to the Electricity Commission of New South Wales. In response to public pressure, the agency was trying to minimize impacts of electric transmission corridors on wildlife, the same challenge facing Consumers Energy, Detroit Edison and various regulatory agencies here in the states.

My work included a couple of weeks in the bush-land and coastal forests with some of Australia’s leading scientists of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO). But my most unforgettable Australian wildlife lesson came as I watched TV and read Sydney’s daily newspaper. I was there when duck hunting was abolished in Western Australia, the largest of the continent’s seven states, located on the other side of the continent from New South Wales. The debates I was exposed to got me thinking about how attitudes about wildlife are formed.

The demise of duck hunting in Western Australia no doubt started long before 1990. I just happened to be on the continent when the issue hit the fan. As a long-time duck hunter, I followed with great interest the public debates among representatives of the “duck shooters,” as waterfowl hunters are referred to in Australia, elected officials, and various conservation-oriented groups.

In one nationally-televised session hosted by a Phil Donahue-type, both sides agreed that hunting had no impact on the duck populations of Western Australia in part because there were few waterfowl hunters. Rather, the sole question was whether duck shooting for sport is cruel. The duck hunters’ representative made a few good points in defending his sport, but faced an uphill battle. The Australian public, of which more than 80% live in a handful of large cities, was overwhelming in its disdain for killing “nice” animals. And ducks were considered nice. One participant stated that her group was not a bunch of radicals. They did not object, she said, if a landowner shot a roo’ (kangaroo) feeding in his garden. But shooting ducks was much different—there was no necessity, and ducks are peaceful.

Hers was a theme I had noted soon after I got off my plane. The highly urbanized Australians valued each wildlife species on a sort of sliding scale with animals that were pretty and cuddly, like swans (an exotic species) and koalas on the top end, and snakes, lizards, and meat-eating mammals on the low end. TV shows and magazines routinely characterized animals in anthropomorphic terms with birds portrayed as peaceful and kindly, and predators as villainous big-bad-wolf types. The CSIRO biologists I worked with had a much different view which included a deep appreciation for the role of predators in Australian ecosystems and tended to focus on the big picture—habitat management, control of exotic species, and endangered species protection.

Most Australians I met in 1990 were keenly interested in wildlife, but their exposure to animals came mainly from zoos, parks, and the British-influenced media. Ironically, the public of what we Americans often think of as a “frontier” land was strangely disconnected from its wildlife heritage. I suspected the abolishment of duck hunting in Western Australia would help keep them disconnected, because there is no substitute for direct, in-the-field experiences with animals.

Intelligent and wonderful people put an end to duck hunting not for science-based, conservation-related reasons, but simply because they liked ducks. Yet, I saw a lot of really bad things happening to rare but unpopular Australian wildlife go unaddressed. The loss of wetlands, cutting of forests that regenerate only at a snail’s pace in the arid climate, and competition from exotic animals brought from Europe were the real threats to the wildlife of Australia. The CSIRO biologists knew that well, but conceded that the public was more inclined to squabble over the fate of individual animals they valued.

Since my visit, the late Steve Irwin, “The Crocodile Hunter,” educated his fellow Australians and others worldwide about the value of historically unpopular wildlife and about habitat conservation. But the concerns of Australians about individual ducks intensified. Western Australia was just the first state to fall—duck hunting was subsequently banned in New South Wales (in 1995) and Queensland ( in 2005), and appears to be on the way out in Victoria.

The parallels between attitudes in Australia and the United States are striking. Aldo Leopold, considered by many as the father of American wildlife management, noted in his famous “Sand County Almanac” that our biases toward things in nature are in part traditional, as you tend to like the kinds of trees, shrubs, and flowers your parents and grandparents told you to like. He wrote that he had individual likings for many species his neighbors lumped under “one aspersive category: brush.” And he cautioned that we should not love game, but hate predators—we should try to understand the valuable relationships among species.

But like Australians, we in the United States are becoming more urbanized and disconnected from nature (see related articles in the last two issues of The Wildlife Volunteer). We’re having a hard time with the “comebacks” of wolves, bobcats, bears, and alligators, and even the rediscovery of cougars. In Michigan, we recently voted against dove hunting simply because we like doves. And as wolf-human conflicts are intensifying we seem eager to push the predator “back in its place.”

I worry that Proposal G, which was passed in 1996 and called for science-based wildlife management, is really a pipe dream. It’s going to take leadership and education if we are to focus our attention where it is most needed. We must try hard to keep real-life connections with wildlife, so the attitudes we form are grounded in an understanding of the nature of wild, rather than distinctions between the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Dr. Patrick J. Rusz D
Director of Wildlife Programs

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