For those who might be interested in a more extended examination of
hunting, conservation, and preservation, I would recommend a recent book
by Jan Dizard. A book review follows:



Going Wild: Hunting, Animal Rights, and the Contested Meaning of
Nature. By Jan E. Dizard. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press,
1994.) xvi + 182 pp. Notes, bibliography, index. Cloth, $35.00, Paper,
$12.95.

The environmental movement is often represented as a tension between
"preservation" and "conservation," between John Muir and Gifford
Pinchot. Underlying these categories are more fundamental beliefs about
the nature of nature undisturbed by humans and of the proper role of
humans in nature. Is nature an equilibrium that can take care of itself so
that human interference is undesirable? Or, is nature chaotic and so
pervasively impacted by humans that any "balance" is all-but necessarily
a human construct? Jan Dizard probes these categories in his case study
of the decision by the Metropolitan District Commission (MDC) -- the
agency charged with supplying water to Boston -- to allow deer hunting
within the watershed of the Quabbin Reservoir.

The MDC acquired the Swift River valley in the 1920s to construct
a reservoir. After removing the buildings that had dotted the valley and
constructing a reservoir, the agency closed the watershed to the public;
its roughly 55,000 acres were intensively managed to provide filtration
for the water supply. Wildlife -- particularly White-tail Deer -- were
unintended beneficiaries of this policy and their populations increased
dramatically; in the absence of predators and hunting, the deer became
unafraid. With MDC's encouragement, the deer became potent symbols
for the Quabbin as "an idealized, tame wilderness, a place where all the
negative effects of human interaction with wild animals and the
environment were absent." [12] By the late 1980s, however, the
negative effects of the deer were becoming evident. Their browsing was
preventing regeneration of the diverse forest that the MDC preferred for
water quality. After several studies, the agency concluded that it was
necessary to reduce the deer population of the Quabbin and that the only
viable solution was to open the reserve to public hunting. The decision
was controversial. The agency's traditional supporters were split into
opposing camps and long-time critics of the agency's prohibition on
hunting found themselves allied with the MDC.

Examining the controversy through interviews with the
participants, Professor Dizard's book reveals a far more complex mix of
beliefs than the traditional conservationist/preservationist dichotomy. On
one side were those who felt that the Quabbin was a natural sanctuary,
that any problems arose from MDC's desire to manage this sanctuary to
produce resources, that nature's balance was best maintained without
human intervention; some were also opposed to the very idea of hunting,
whether because they were proponents of animal rights or because they
simply found the idea of killing for pleasure abhorrent. While many of the
agency's supporters were also upset by hunting, they had come to accept
the need for active management: they viewed the choice not as between
"natural" and "managed," but as between "deer-managed" and "human-
managed"; nature alone could neither take care of itself nor yield the
resources needed by an expanding human population. Finally, there were
the hunters, a group that felt that the Quabbin had become unnatural
because of the hunting prohibition: the very tameness of the deer that
was valued by those who viewed the Quabbin as a sanctuary was a
symbol of its artificiality.

In Professor Dizard's hands, the controversy over the Quabbin
opens up to reveal a complex of perceptions on nature and our species'
place in nature. It also reveals the complex social and economic
differences among the participants in the debate. Professor Dizard's book
makes the abstractions of the topic concrete. As such, it would be useful
not only in environmental history but also environmental ethics classes.

Dale Goble
University of Idaho
College of Law