Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 26, 1991 TAG: 9102260450
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Even in a pro-hunting state such as Virginia, hunters' rights are endangered because many people are becoming disgusted with rowdy hunters who abuse land and landowners alike, longtime environmentalist Rupert Cutler said.
If hunting is to survive, Cutler told a Roanoke civic group, "hunters must do a better job of policing their own ranks. They should turn in a game poacher as quickly as they would turn in a drug pusher."
Cutler's lunchtime speech about hunting may have seemed an unusual note for the director of Explore's proposed Lewis and Clark environmental center to strike in one of his first public appearances since joining the Explore staff last month.
But the environmental movement, Cutler pointed out, spans the spectrum of opinion about hunting, from anti-hunting groups such as the Humane Society to pro-hunting organizations such as the Izaak Walton League.
The organizations he's worked for - Defenders of Wildlife and the National Audubon Society - have been "caught in the middle," Cutler noted, and tried to protect wildlife habitat without getting involved in how that wildlife is used.
Cutler's personal view, as a professional with a doctorate in wildlife resource management, is that hunting is "biologically sound."
However, as the nation becomes more urbanized, Cutler told the Civitan Club, fewer people have any connection with hunting - so society becomes less sympathetic to hunters' rights and more susceptible to the emotional appeals of animal-rights activists.
The animal-rights movement is also adept at providing the media with "colorful headlines and eye-catching photos," Cutler said, so those who are anti-hunters have a public relations advantage.
As a result, "the center of gravity of public opinion is perceptibly shifting in the direction of animal protection," Cutler said. "The growing political clout of the national animal-rights and animal-welfare groups could produce a total ban on public hunting and trapping in some states, such as California and Massachusetts, by the turn of the century."
Already, a lawsuit funded by animal-rights groups has shut down the black bear season in California, Cutler said. And in November, Californians voted to ban the use of dogs in hunting mountain lions, "effectively ending legal mountain lion hunting" there.
Hunters cannot do anything to change the views of the animal-rights movement, Cutler said, but they can do something about "the anti-social behavior of a minority of hunters" who are making life difficult for all hunters.
"For example, would you expect a rank-and-file group of rural landowners in Bland County to petition the Jefferson National Forest supervisor to create extensive, closed-to-hunting `wildlife preserves' on that forest?" Cutler said.
"It's a fact. Forest Supervisor Joy Berg told me just two weeks ago that she was called to Bland County to deal with an angry group of landowners fed up with drunken hunters, abusive hunters, hunters shooting animals in their front yards, hunters leaving piles of litter - and piles of deer carcasses - behind them, and hunters spotting and shooting game at night."
Many rural landowners, who control hunters' access to much of the state's game habitat, "have `had it' with boisterous, abusive city hunters and `good old boys' with their dogs, who treat the landowner and law alike with disrespect," Cutler said.
He said sportsmen's groups should work to become "better known for being helpful to their communities as a whole" and to turn in law-breaking hunters.
by CNB