Faunal Force

Worth of Wildlife

Why are you so concerned? Why devote a life to it? What's it worth? So you lose some; what's the loss? So you poached a few deer; what's the Court's standard of value for a conviction penalty?

Easy questions; difficult answers.

Here's how to evaluate faunal worth (in addition to the previous post of opportunity cost):

1. Added value
   • wildlife in the county increases the tax base by---dollars
   • wildlife on the land increases its value by ---dollars
   • wildlife on the farm increases the crop yield (reduces insect loss, etc.) by ---dollars
2. Direct worth - as at the shooting preserve
3. Parallel worth - as beef - equivalent price
   Bowling costs for me $10; I like hunting 10 times more; hunting must be worth at least $100. (Note this is not the worth of wildlife but a wildlife-related opportunity.)
4. Assigned value - by expert appraisers; a minimum simulated market value.
5. Management cost - I spent $10,000 on the project and over 10 years it produced 100 birds. If rational, I (or whoever approved the project) must have thought them worth at least $10 each.
6. Destruction value - what will it cost to replace the function of wildlife if removed (a marsh acre is said to be worth $120 - 150,000 in terms of what must be done by other systems to stay equal.)
7. Replacement value - a court-assigned value
8. Damage and control cost - (negative worth)
9. Gross expenditures - so discredited it should not be used
10. License fees - so small as to be meaningless
11. User fees - rare but possible
12. Vacation time - use salary per day; a person decides among alternatives how to spend a day. This seems a rich area for work, especially in comparison to readily-priced alternative ways to spend a day. People probably are more attuned to the monetary worth of a day than anything else in society.
13. Willingness to pay - count the total costs of a hunt or wildlife-related experience.
14. Willingness to exchange - wildlife land acquisition costs (public or private willingness to buy land to achieve its wildlife). The animals must have been worth at least this much in land purchase price. The manager seeks areas that may be changed in wildlife value so that they will best meet faunal system users' demand over at least 150 years at the lowest present-discounted cost (purchase, depreciation, inflation, and management)
15. Consumer surplus - value above the willingness to pay. Most value estimates are minimums; this method seeks the extra. How much more value does it have? Technique requires questionnaires. Research is needed.
16. Option demand - price to buy an option that might be exercised in the future (e.g. wilderness; endangered species).
17. Opportunity cost - (the previous post) benefits foregone to get other benefits. To have squirrels you must fore-go a timber sale; the worth of squirrels is at least the amount foregone.
18. Secondary opportunity costs - (negative worth) the losses from open gates, soil compaction, fires, litter foregone all to to allow hunting, etc.
19. Energy equivalents - compare acutal energy content or cost to produce each creature to oil or electricity energy values.
20. Unnamed, there must some day be recognized a concept of monetary profit made from a diverse private for-profit conglomerate (e.g., www.RuralSystem.com), profits that are conditional in part on the presence (in an area of operation) of the populations of wild faunal species. The land acquired or owned is the working platform. The "part" may be a proportion of the total system profits (for these are based on risk taking, human expertise, diversification, planned work over time, and other capital and structure).

Worth of a Squirrel

In Virginia, elections have been lost based on a politician's attitude toward the starting date for the hunting season. Squirrels were important, still are, and will become more important again as the economic woes of the people of the US continue. There are many factors that might influence the starting time and depending on which factor is emphasized, that's where the arguments and disagreements begin.

Somehow in the scope of world problems, squirrel hunting is not a problem but it has the elements of difficult decisions that if they were better understood by more people, the decisions would likely to be much better that they are now.

I'll tell more about such decisions in the future. One aspect is the monetary worth of a squirrel. There is no legal market for the beasts. I've tagged them and been bitten by them and then you know they are beasts!

An interesting way to estimate the worth of a squirrel is to find out what they depend upon such as oak trees. To have squirrels, a land owner must fore-go cutting down his oak trees. Thus the worth of the squirrels dependent upon the trees has to be at least worth (to a rational person) the foregone dollars from the tree harvests.

It's called opportunity cost by economists, a minimum value, and worth considering in a set of techniques needed to converge on the worth of fauna.

An Attitude Toward Animal Life

I hope that it's clear that I perceive (and encourage others to the same perception) that there are many fauna with very high monetary potential and that in order to exploit that potential, not only fur but faunal-related activities are required. I've listed them in my Rural System book.The fur-related resource system, for example, is a monetary system, with high return potentials. It should not be a backwoods anachronism, a pioneer days hold-over, but a modern profit-centered production system. To do so, to be such a system, does not preclude certain benefits claimed for the current disjunct activities such as recreation and historic and cultural values but in this system such activities are irrelevant, inefficient, and certainly insufficient to stabilize full-scale, efficient resource use.

A trapper enjoys his or her work - the pleasure of being outdoors, the beauties of nature, healthful exercise and more. Is this "recreation" or is it a corollary of "desirable employment," something few people now seem to experience in their work days? I do not think trapping "for recreation" should be promoted, encouraged, or even mentioned. It is irrelevant and a topic producing great anxiety and stress among many citizens. Trapping is for money. The fact that other pleasurable benefits are gained by some trappers is irrelevant. The fact that not much money is made is also irrelevant. There are thousands of irrational and unskilled people who unsuccessfully pursue riches in all walks of life. The saddest example are the urban youths who persist in basketball practice in order to play professional ball. The odds of success are so low as to make the activity, with only little "fun" in the pursuit, irrational.

There are people who make their livelihood from trapping, but they are few; others stabilize cash flow by this seasonal work. Only about 0.7% of the U.S. people trap. They sell an average of about $600 a year! Averages are misleading because many who attempt to trap make no sales; few make large net gains. The emphasis: it is likely that no state agency collects enough license fees from trappers to support the activities of administration, law enforcement, or management (when it exists) of a fur-related system. There are very few (and declining) numbers of trappers (though this number fluctuates greatly with style, fur prices, the future market, and the potentials achieved by a fur system).

I do not like to dig weeds from the yard. At least many people will agree with me on that! you may say. Perhaps we have different reasons. I see an intricate system in every plant, a profound solar collector that challenges the best scientific minds, a mathematically splendid configuration that aligns leaves to collect the most sun during the day, a biochemical factory of wondrous loops and processes and thresholds and adjustments to accommodate freezing, grazing, and the pitiful efforts of some yard tender. I think about these things; I hate to dig weeds. Then I dig, because my love of a clear lawn is greater than my hate.

I hate to kill animals, even spiders in the living room, but I do. They are micro-lions, predaceous on insects and other creepy things. They are ugly (to me), but then I have seen people married to ugly spouses. Everything is relative. They are probably beautiful to another spider - maybe even to the other person's spouse. I hate to kill spiders, but I do. I had a fascinating colony of ants in a log, but then they attacked my porch. I hated to kill them too, but I did. I hate to see pigs butchered. But I have and I still enjoy pork. I have seen beef slaughter houses and I did not like them, but I continue to eat beef and wear leather shoes, and benefit from the products and taxes of the entire beef industry.

The problem grows more complex the more the lines are blurred between what is life and how we relate to it. There are blurred differences between plants and animals; viruses have done this for us. Brown marine algae has motile sperm. It seems okay to kill disease-producing creatures, poisonous snakes, and mosquitoes. I kill in my home and yard, but I hate it. I kill creatures even when I walk...but I hate it. I pay someone to collect eggs, kill for me lobsters, crabs, fish, chickens, pigs, and cattle ... but I hate it. I avoid living in a tub of tears or in huddled despondency by accepting the trade-offs I must make. For me to live requires that I destroy life - germs, parasites, garden pests, giant trees - at least occasionally in order to get energy and certain amino acids.

It seems to me that thoughtful people need to reconcile these difficult problems of love of self and self-support requirements, and the trade-offs that need to be made to live a life that "fits," that matches up, and that has actions consistent with what is believed and stated.

Except for pathologic cases of which I have heard, I know of no one who likes to kill animals. I have known slaughter house workers, poultry farmers, pest control experts, trappers, and hunters and not one truly likes the instant of the kill. To suggest all hunters or trappers and others do so seems an erroneous observation. The instant of kill seems a necessity if people are to eat meat, to protect themselves and their foods or livelihood from rats. They must protect themselves from bird or mammalian pests or disease vectors, decide to use use any animal oils or experience any of the benefits of animal-based medical and pharmaceutical research and development.

There is hardly a need to attempt to develop a rational argument for not killing animals. There are some who "know what is right" and the basis of that knowledge is metaphysical. Others' knowledge of what is right is grounded in observation and inductive reasoning. Some insist upon consistency, others do not. There appear to be no grounds for discussion and debate over issues of trapping. Strong efforts to ban it have been made (Gentile 1987). The use of the leg-hold or foothold trap has been banned in a few states. I believe that among people willing to discuss their differences and seek compromises and concessions to aggrieved minorities as typical in a democracy, then several premises may be worth study. They seem to be needed in an endeavor reaching for the next century.

My personal feelings are that while killing is a necessary condition of human life, it has some rules or policies that ought to go with it. One such rule-set is that:

1. Every death-dealing act should be known and acknowledged by the killers and benefactor of that act. It is at least a respect for the work of the organism, the process, the struggle, the eons of trial, the expression of survival, the wonder of it all. Perhaps religious or spiritual, it need not be framed in these terms. To kill should require, should generate, at least some thought, appreciation, and primitive regret. Other premises may be worth study:
2. All species should be protected from extermination by people.
3. To receive some human benefits (or avoid costs) from some animals, some must be killed.
4. No animal should be killed needlessly (i.e., without a prior perceived use for benefit or cost reduction).
5. As few animals should be killed as possible, consistent with objectives (e.g., two heavy animals may yield as much quality meat as four light-weight animals).
6. All possible use should be made of any animal killed.
7. Killing of any animal should be done:
   1. as quickly as possible
   2. as cost effectively as possible
   3. in the presence or view of as few people as possible and as inconspicuously as possible
   4. with as little prior warning or "threat" to the animal as possible
   5. with the least stress or frustration possible to actual or potential observers of the event
   6. with minimum post mortem discussion of the actual kill
   7. with as low risk of failure as possible and
   8. with safety to humans (and other animals).
8. There should be minimum risks of secondary effects (such as consuming a poisoned animal).

I have avoided using "humane." Where and when killing of an animal is judged appropriate, then I suggest the above as appropriate criteria for doing so.

Dealing with my thoughts about annual harvest for fur is not easy. First, let me speak briefly of pleasure. I pat my dog's head because it feels good. Similarly, I stroke cats. It feels good, and neither seem to mind my doing so. I eat ice cream partially because it feels good. I eat candy because it tastes good, not because I need it. As I list my sensory activities, I can easily convince myself that I am a hedonist. I do not want to stray far from the topic, but there is potentially a hedonistic element to my wanting fur, either for my family, fellow citizens, or myself. I do, because it feels good. I do not deny it; I cannot consider that "bad" given I now realize the survival value in the many things I do because they "feel good" to my many senses.

There are artificial furs that feel good, but few that feel as good as the real fur. There is diversity in wild fur. Perhaps this is a quibble over the subtle difference between a poor wild fur and a high quality synthetic fur. I do not care to press the point. There is a difference, perhaps known only to people like those who can discriminate a synthetic diamond from the real one.

Knowledge of having the real thing, something genuine, is pleasurable. Advertisers work on this concept suggesting only one brand is right. Plastic furniture looks like wood but it does not feel or sound like wood. At a distance, all is the same. True or not, the wearer or owner knows, and this provides pleasure. Pleasure easily attracts negative connotations. I believe pleasure is part of a high quality life and a condition far removed from a condition of existence, certainly from frustration and stress. Associated with sufficient pleasurable experiences, I group generally-lowered hostility, reduced personal conflicts, improved personal health, and increased longevity.

I think furs are the basis for excellent functional garments. They have proved over the evolutionary long-term to be wonderful insulators with characteristics needed by animals. My former student, Seth Diamond, found that the energy saved by deer hides as clothing were more important to pre-settlement people than the energy of food. There may be a primitive love of fur. I believe furs should be used. They can save energy - both directly for a person and indirectly by preventing loss of health. Even collars and trim have special functions of warmth, insulation, and reduced conduction of heat from the body. Warm clothes, fur being a part, can reduce heat needed in buildings, heat needed to be consumed in food, and extra heat for outdoors work or play.

I have not done analyses of synthetic furs. but in other products produced from petrochemicals, the energy costs are very great. To suggest that synthetic furs replace natural furs is short on the energy argument in two ways. One is that the synthetic furs rarely have comparable insulation (warmth) properties. The other is that they cost a great deal of fossil energy and rarely last as long as natural fur. The ratio of energy saved per year per unit of energy it cost to produce the fur is not favorable.

I generally favor functional garments and therefore take great pleasure in seeing a warm fur hat and coat on a person in a cold climate. I admit to temporary negative reactions to wild furs worn only once or twice for purposes of show or fashion. These are two subtle distinctions that blur my confidence. One is that I do not mind nearly as much seeing domestic furs used under such conditions. The other is that I often see great joy in the wearer and his or her colleagues, and then I must judge (or not) whether such social joy and personal pleasure is worth the cost. Perhaps it is.

I've tried here to sketch the dimensions of an analysis of the problems that exist among groups of society that have differing views on the importance of fur, the means of securing it, the production system needed for the animals potentially yielding fur, and the associated benefits (or costs) from these same animals. There are other monetary uses of fauna.

That animals have rights was established in 1866 (Gentile 1987). Animal rights activists seem to believe that wild animals have a right to exist as individuals. "Pity for animals is no longer the main issue; legal standing is" (Gentile 1987:502).

I do not know how the legal winds for or against trapping will blow in the near future.

These comments were based on my book, Forest Fauna.

Faunal Color

Just yesterday I heard from a school-approved TV program a concept that I thought had been put to rest years ago. Maybe not. Rather than resorting to some folklore or metaphysical reasons for animals being colored as they now appear, it is useful to reason that over the eons of their existence, given every onslaught of temperature, drought, glaciation, widespread predation, continental drift and disease, their coloration now equips them as a population for surviving current conditions. The greatest lasting challenge is budgeting energy... assuring adequate intake given the known costs of living and the laws of physics.

Ranging from the whiteness of polar bears minimally emitting energy in treeless area of long nights,  to the blackness of equatorial bears in dense cover, radiating abundant energy, the surviving animal populations are those colored to meet the year-around, day-length conditions for energy budgeting. This has been explained by Aaron Moen (1973. Wildlife ecology. W. H. Freeman, San Francisco, CA. 458pp.) and Valerius Geist (1978. Life strategies, human evolution, environmental design: toward a biological theory of health, Springer-Verlag, New York, NY 495pp.)

The coloration of the zebra is not for camouflage (although that may help an occasional animal or be the root of a story by a casual human observer) but for energy budgeting. The white or black is a strategic ploy half way between black or white and identical to the brown condition maintained by most animals as an optimum condition with modifications (like hue, migration, hair erection, fur molting etc.). It is a ploy that allows for survival in the extreme heat of the day and the cold of the night in a single color pattern.

There seem to be exception to every rule. Fundamental rules with minimum exceptions is the nature of human knowledge that most of us seek. Missing the fundamental rule of optimum energy budgeting over the long-run could be a bad mistake for us all.

Populations

My granddad, George Rinsland, raised fantailed pigeons. He was good at it and won in many shows. He raised them for a hobby but it was a consuming life interest. He read, discussed, visited, competed and invented. He was an experimental genetics amateur. He knew the colors, shapes, fans, behaviors, health, that he wanted and bred to achieve them ... and did so over 40 years. I was an observer and made a few bucks by cleaning his pens and tending the birds on special occasions.

His loft of birds was a population. An animal  population is a specific group of one species (or of carefully described genetic similarity) at a specific time and specific place.  Using the word in this way can improve discussions and lead to improved faunal management.

I saw this endangered wild ass, the onager, sub-species (Equus hemionus khur) running in front of the jeep driven by Y.V. Jhala, a former student. It was surviving, somehow, in the Rann of Kutch, Northwestern India. Whether a group of animals that is at a very low number, perhaps nearing extinction, can be called a population can be discussed.

Faunal system management is typically directed at populations (rather than at  individual animals). Both approaches need to be used.

Changing Faunal Management

Many students of wildlife management have read of Aldo Leopold's cabin and many have enjoyed their family cabin or summer place. A cabin in the woods was symbolic of the great outdoors, life lived there with the animals and the dynamics of factors affecting them. Many aspired to be managers of wildlife refuges and that included the woodland or rangeland house.

Wildlife management probably never was that and now it is changing rapidly. It is changing because of fewer hunters, who do not come from fatherless or divorced families, into a society without outdoor experiences. Urban wildlife experiences are now bird- and squirrel-watching or negative bouts with various pests. Jobs, never abundant, seem to be decreasing, and funding for them in state and federal agencies seems halted in the uncertainties of the century. Agencies do not change rapidly (as noted p. 113 in Peterle's "2020 Vision:Meeting the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Challenges of the 21st Century" (1992)).

Less travel, more police work, more pest damage management, more education, more accountability and especially application of computer optimization to assure expenditures are aligned well with objectives ... seem to me to be in the future. There has to be more applications of results from past studies. Not seeking to produce "more animals" as has been the past for game animals, the needs will be for how to limit populations. Shooting will remain one way (e.g., as needed for Yellowstone elk). I cannot see my way around the conclusion that faunal enterprises will emerge and the interests of the faunal system manager of the future will be on increasing the net value of benefits from tightly-managed populations. Limiting human disease will trump trophy management and even increasing animal meat for people. Reducing vertebrate animal damage will gain new status within remaining university programs.

Interactions and Relations

"Ecology" is said to be the study of the interactions of plants and animals with each other and with their environment. The word is often used and mis-used for it is only the "study of..." but there is more than that problem. Here is the heresy ...

I find few if any interactions, only relations. By relations I mean a factor (like nitrogen) causing a change in the color or size of a plant. (Something does something to something else.) It can be depicted for study and modeling as an arrow. I assume that an interaction is depicted by a two-headed or consistently paired arrows, symbolizing an equal and opposite reaction. I also think that there may be consistent unequal effects in a consistently paired relationship as suggested here as B.

Discussing interactions is interesting and usually pleasing, but there is growing interest in artificial intelligence and social behavior and in Wolfram's work (A New Kind of Science) suggesting that systems, no matter how complex or simple, are governed by many, many simple paired relationship. Rather than continuing to talk of magical interactions like "nature" or "the vapors," it is likely to be advantageous to the modern rural resource system manager to at least hypothesize that there are only relations and these are to be discovered, described and then used in understanding natural systems, making predictions, and managing them for human benefits.

Predator Management

Predator management is a topic in the gray zone of converging public values, hunting and trapping, integrated vertebrate pest damage management, and population management. It is a controversial practice and may, in some situation, have undesirable secondary effects that are worse than the initial reason for initiating control (one aspect of such management). When predators or their populations are out of control they may affect recovery of species that are threatened or endangered. Planned increases in animals that may become predaceous need to have related population stabilizing or reduction strategies. Predator control (a potential part of management) is expensive. If started, typically it must be continued. It is only recommended when:

• are not likely to involve an endangered species,
• costs and losses of predation are measured,
• real (not likely to change due to chance)
• significant to the land owner, and
• the costs are substantially less than the perceived losses.

A Raccoon Sub-System

Here's one way to link up ideas about good and bad animals and "pests."

The raccoon, Procyon lotor, is an invaluable part of Virginia's and much of North America's wildlife resource. It is valued for hunting, trapping, nature study, and it must occasionally be controlled where doing damage. It has great ecological, environmental, economic, and esthetic importance. Because conflicting views exist about how it should be increased (e.g., for hunting) or reduced (e.g., for profitable crop and livestock production), the best scientific knowledge is needed to help make the trade-offs.

The basics of a raccoon system are available and a proposed enterprise might result someday.

Vertebrate Pest Damage

I've tried in my later years to emphasize the difference between IPM or integrated pest management which is discussed primarily for insect pest problems and those for the larger fauna. I taught a course on IPM in the College of Agriculture showing how computers could be used to improve the difficult decisions of cost- effective resource management. "Biological control" was only one part of that course. I stressed the phrase integrated pest damage management IPDM.  I gave a speech (now edited), was elected president of the Vertebrate Pest Damage Association, and then had to resign because of family limitations. The point: We should not be managing or changing populations of animals (sometimes called pests) but managing cost effectively their damage which is humanly-perceived losses, costs, and risks. One may be the same as the other, but it is usually not. "Good animals," even those loved and respected, may do awful things. We must manage their impacts or effects. Removing them may be one way to remove or reduce such loss, but fencing them out of a crop area may be an example of an alternative. There are many such alternatives known by experts. I have subsequently advocated the Pest Force as part of the proposed Rural System. Wild faunal system managers typically work with animal populations; vertebrate pest damage management specialists typically work with individual or small groups of animals.

People working with insects problems may also find IPM more appropriate for the future as IPDM.