>Well,
>
>Hunters can hunt rats and mice, skunks and racoons, opossums, and even
>not uncommon deer, in my (no --their) city backyard, even as I watch
>those robins, Calif tohees, house finches, Stellar and scrub jays, and
>other fine city birds from out my window.
>
>But, if the hunter wants to go out in the woods to hunt, then I want to
>go there too, to look at birds, flowers, insects, large mammals, the sky,
>the horizon, smell the smells, hear the sounds, etc.
>
>There _is_ a qualitative and quantitative difference between my city park
>and the wilderness. Hunters "need" wilderness no more than I.
>Peter

In response to these thoughts, I'm not sure if the point of my comments
about the difference between hunters and birders vis-a-vis cities and
wilderness was taken. It is as follows:

Birders can bird anywhere.

Hunters (responsible ones) can hunt *only* where they're allowed to hunt;
certainly not in city parks or in Peter's back yard (or if so, something
needs to be changed). And hunters, even more than birders, are losing
ground. When a city spreads out, there may be a lot of natural habitat in
and around it for nature-lovers, but very quickly it gets closed to
hunting, as it should, for potential danger to people, not wildlife.

I did not in any way mean to imply that hunters appreciate or "need"
wilderness, in the way perhaps Peter interpreted it, any more than the rest
of us. But you can't hunt the animals that hunters normally hunt in little
pockets of habitat around cities, so by necessity they must be concerned
with saving the wilderness.


Dennis Paulson phone: (206) 756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax: (206) 756-3352
University of Puget Sound email: dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416