Do hunting and fishing bring us closer to nature?

Buying fish, sausage or meat saves you from breaking a social taboo in some industrialized countries, especially when hunting and fishing are done for recreation. In a perspective article on Conservation of Naturea research team from the natural and social sciences and environmental philosophy, including Professor Robert Arlinghaus from the IGB, has added a new perspective to the topic of “recreational use of wild animals.”

The hypothesis is that an emotionally intense interaction between hunters or fishermen and wild animals can create a particularly strong sense of responsibility, described as “environmental stewardship.” And this in turn will be an incentive for many to commit to lifelong action in protecting the environment and species.

However, the research team distinguishes this intense experience of nature from more superficial hunting and fishing practices, which do not necessarily promote feelings of stewardship.

The research team sheds light on the psychological and emotional side of recreational hunting and fishing. “Because of the powerful emotions it evokes and the education participants share, hunting and angling have the capacity to develop lifelong character traits and ethics central to being an environmental steward,” said Charles List, professor emeritus of philosophy at SUNY Plattsburgh University, New York, US, co-author of the study.

“Hunting and fishing in general require intensive interaction with natural processes, ecosystems, living creatures and annual and daily cycles. Through the experience of searching, foraging, catching, taking, killing and processing wild animals, hunters and fishermen also become part of the natural food web.

“Close psychosocial integration with nature can create a strong sense of responsibility to protect wildlife and fish, which we call stewardship,” added Prof. Arlinghaus, sustainability researcher and professor of fisheries at the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Superficial interactions lead to the outsourcing of responsibility for animals

However, there are also practices that go beyond a short-term intervention. This does not necessarily promote a sense of responsibility for the conservation of wildlife and the environment.

“There are examples of hunting and fishing experiences dominated by market logic, for example in small put-and-take fishing ponds or in hunting experiences for specially raised wild animals released in small that enclosure, known as canned hunting.

“These practices lead to only superficial experiences of nature. They are designed to satisfy the desire for a quick reward. Often there is no intensive analysis of the personal relationship with nature and its own effects on the life of animals,” explained first author Dr. . Sam Shephard of Ave Maria University in Florida.

The practice of hunting and fishing can generate skills and knowledge useful for conservation and management. However, the important factor is not the training itself, but what it triggers for people psycho-emotionally. Fishing according to the catch-and-release principle, for example, can strengthen the sense of responsibility for a fish when it is released out of respect for the creature or to protect a natural fish population through self-control.

However, catch-and-release can also be a prime example of a superficial economization of wildlife use, for example if the release event is conducted for economic reasons only to maintain the attraction of a commercially operated fishing Similar tensions exist in particular forms of hunting.

“Management arises when people become aware of the consequences of their own actions and make personally binding conclusions that lead to the sustainable management of animal populations, including self-control about how many which animal to take and how,” explains associate professor Erica von Essen of the Stockholm Resilience Center.

He suggests that such supervision can often operate independently of formal harvest regulations. In Sweden, for example, hunters are currently protesting against moose quotas that they consider to be too high, which are deliberately preventing moose harvest.

Reduced to a management task: Emotional approach to socially forbidden killing

Hunting and fishing can also be turned into acts of killing for reasons of pest control or the control of invasive species. In this case, animals are viewed as aggregate biomass that must be disposed of for a specific purpose.

“Reducing killing as a management task promotes a rational, but not an emotional, approach to nature. To avoid criticism, hunters and fishermen in industrialized countries often play the role of rational wildlife and fish managers and distance themselves from the more emotional or cultural dimensions of their activity because they are increasingly socially taboo,” said anthropologist Dr. Thorsten Gieser from the Czech Academy of Sciences.

According to the authors, this means that some traditions that were once used to honor the victim have been abandoned or are used cautiously due to a lack of social acceptance. This can shift the emotional boundaries of hunters and anglers toward wildlife in a direction that undermines environmental protection.

“It is important to have different views on different recreational hunting and fishing practices. An important basis for this is to remove the social taboo of killing wild animals in the context of recreational fishing and hunting because such practices can develop of very strong emotional connections and experiences about the consequences of one’s actions that can lead to pro-environmental behavior and support for conservation action,” Arlinghaus concluded.