Another suggestion: _Southern Hunting in Black and White_ by Stuart A.
Marks, Princeton U Press, 1991.

Gene Hunn.

On Fri, 21 Apr 1995, D. Goble wrote:

>
>
> 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
>
>
>