Magazine Articles

This is the 5th in a series of articles dedicated to helping hunters and anglers throughout the United States and Canada appreciate their history of achievement in wildlife conservation and to encouraging greater commitment to the cause. In this issue the author concludes the story of one of the greatest North American conservationists of them all.

He was many things: scientist, hunter, explorer, naturalist, entrepeneur and author. Above all else, however, George Bird Grinnell was and remains the most influential conservationst in North American History.

Like a robust and sturdy wooden stool, the highly successful South African Conservation Model rests on three legs. The first leg is provided by the public sector or government, the second leg by the private sector or individuals, and the third is the free market economy which determines the economic value of wildlife and the price of goods and services applicable to it. The cooperative engagement of these three institutions has resulted in South Africa providing the most cost effective and efficient access in all of Africa to a thriving wildlife sector.

Throughout time, man has been linked by inevitable interdependence with wild creatures. Wild nature gave us ourselves. We returned the gift in the last century developing wildlife refuges and reserves, National Parks, National Forests and legislation for the protection of wildlife. By the 1930s it was evident these achievements weren't enough. A second revolution, incited and carried by the wise use philosophy of North American hunters, had occurred. We are again challenged to rise in the name of wildlife. 

The history of the famed Newfoundland caribou has been punctuated by population highs and lows within a challenging milieu of punishing winters, disease, a diverse assortment of predators, and a human culture heavily dependent on wild resources. The history of the famed Newfoundland caribou has been punctuated by population highs and lows within a challenging milieu of punishing winters, disease, a diverse assortment of predators, and a human culture heavily dependent on wild resources. Currently the Newfoundland woodland caribou is not listed under Canada's Species at Risk Act (SARA).

Times are changing across the vast barrenlands of Newfoundland, the massive 43,000 square-mile island that lies off the east coast of Canada. One of the greatest icons of Newfoundland’s wilderness, the woodland caribou, has fallen on hard times. Hunters and outfitters, outdoor recreationists, and government biologists have all observed that the number of caribou is lower and lower each year, a decline that seemed impossible during the glory days of caribou hunting in the late 1990s. Caribou numbers have fallen from almost 100,000 strong in those days to approximately 30,000 today.

Canada's Newfoundland caribou population is currently the only woodland caribou population in North America that is not protected under endangered species legislation. This makes Newfoundland the only place where non-residents can legally hunt woodland caribou, though these opportunities have diminished over the last decade. In the late 1990s, there were about 100,000 caribou on the island of Newfoundland. This population has declined by about 65% in the past 15 years.

Newfoundland, with an area of 112,000 square kilometers, is the sixteenth largest island in the world. A wonder of geographic fusion, the region is a product of massive tectonic collisions and volcanic eruption which has remained relatively unchanged geologically for 400 million years.

The hunting community often focuses upon its financial contributions towards conservation. However, in the author's view paying a tax established in 1937 on a rifle or ammunition today does not make anyone a conservationist, regardless of whether they hunt or not. So what does makes someone a conservationist and how would you know if you met one? If hunters want to be known as conservationists, shouldn't the community be able to articulate what it means by the term?