Since last Monday’s class, my professor’s question, “Why haven’t the hunters or farmers in [my] family gone vegetarian/vegan?” has been burning in my mind. Unfortunately, due to the sake of time, we didn’t spend much (if any) class time exploring that question on Wednesday, so I’ve been left to explore it on my own. 

To be honest, I’m glad that this question has been posed to me in the way that it has. Not only is it a good question to ponder and meditate on, but it certainly motivates me to get back into hunting and fishing as I once did. After all, hunting and fishing are essential to the conservation and preservation of wildlife and wilderness, given the world we live in today. While hunting and fishing licenses alone only make up around 4% of the total funds that go towards conservation, hunters and anglers still contribute a significant amount of money towards conservation outside of hunting and fishing, through legislation such as the Pittman-Robertson act, which adds an 11% tax on firearms and bows that strictly goes towards conservation, and the Dingel-Johnson act, which taxes fishing equipment for conservation purposes. Hunters and anglers also spend a significant amount of time, money, and effort towards making suitable habitat for wildlife to thrive. Sure, on the surface, the idea of clear-cutting a section of woods for deer sounds bad (trees are necessary to protect the land from erosion, and do provide a habitat for birds and squirrels). But, in reality, it doesn’t just help deer populations. It also helps everything else around the clear-cut, because even too many trees can be a problem for the land (for example, pine needles are acidic, one sick/dying tree can annihilate an entire grove, dead trees can fall over and cause more damage to the land around it, too much tree cover can prevent other plants from getting the sunlight they need to grow, etc, etc). 

Long story short, proper conservation and management of the wilderness is a tremendously complicated yet necessary balancing act. Sure, in a perfect world, we wouldn’t need to perform such a balancing act. We could just leave the wilderness alone to do its thing. We could allow bears and wolves do the hunting for us, while we sustained 8+ billion people on organic, pesticide-free crops sprouting from plots of soil on every city highrise balcony, and lab-grown meat. Unfortunately, such a perfect world does not (and cannot) exist. 

We live in a world where humanity has fundamentally changed how nature acts. We live in a world where managing the wilderness and wildlife via hunting is a necessity. We live in a world where people (particularly poor people who work three jobs and live in food deserts) rely on fast food to survive. We live in a world where people waste food left and right while others have to skip meals and/or outright starve. We live in a world where most people live as though they’re completely disconnected from nature, even though every human being on earth still relies on nature to survive. 

If things were different, I’d gladly eat lab-grown meat and veggies solely harvested from my Tower Gardens, backyard, and the roof of my house. But, we don’t live in such a world. Suffering and death are fundamental parts of life. Everything exists in nature, relies on it, and is part of its sacred cycle, which includes death and suffering. It is what it is. 

That said, I still think we could do way better than we currently are. I agree that factory farms are reprehensible. The way that factory farmed animals are treated makes me sick, both literally and metaphorically (as it should). Those animals are often crammed into cages so small they can’t even turn around in them. They’re pumped full of antibiotics and hormones specifically made to make them grow faster, often resulting in them being unable to move due to their weight breaking their underdeveloped bones. Factory farmed animals are hardly even animals; they’re immobile, sick chunks of meat that will be turned into food that will make the people who eat it sick. 

The way that crops are grown is also fucked up, though to a lesser extent. Pesticides get into the soil and sterilize it, posing a major threat to the topsoil that is essential for growing crops. Pesticides also pose a major threat to pollinators of all kinds, contributing to their rapid decline. And, some pesticides even cause cancer in humans. 

Let’s not forget how those crops go from the field to the table. Most crops are harvested using tractors, which tear up the land and everything in its path in a way that damages topsoil and also eviscerates wildlife (there’s a reason why scavengers often follow the tractors every fall). Aside from that, lots crops are harvested by severely underpaid, overworked undocumented immigrants who have absolutely no say in how they are treated, lest they get deported. Hell, in some countries, slavery is still used to harvest crops that are then shipped across the ocean to the States. 

In other words, I don’t think factory farming is morally justifiable, but neither is the way so many crops are farmed. Both things are objectively harmful to animals, the environment, and people. Therefore, I feel obligated to do everything I can to not monetarily contribute to those things, which is something about vegans/vegetarians that I greatly respect. 

Things get spicy when I introduce hunting and fishing into the conversation, as hunters and anglers make up enough of those who deeply care about conservation and wilderness management, that their decline has led to a conservation crisis (at least, in the United States and Canada). Meanwhile, most people don’t care enough about the wilderness or wildlife to educate themselves on it, and contribute to its conservation. Instead, most people, even if they claim to be pro-environmentalism, fail to do even the most basic things to keep our wilderness and wildlife healthy and protected. 

Case in point: hikers ruin nature far more than they help it (and I say this as an avid hiker myself). Why? Because they pay virtually zero dollars to hike on public lands and trails. And so many people fail to follow the rules and guidelines designed to protect themselves and the wilderness, that those places often have to be closed for restoration reasons. Even then, game wardens come across trespassers all the time. 

People who throw their plastics and tin cans in the recycling bin harm nature far more than help it. Why? Because 95% of the stuff we throw in the recycling bin doesn’t actually get recycled, including and especially plastic (which does not degrade for thousands of years, especially when it is buried in the earth). 

People who drive cars, ride busses, use any sort of electricity whatsoever, harm nature far more than they help it. Why? Because all of those things burn fossil fuels, which are considered greenhouse gasses, which build up in the atmosphere, which makes the earth hotter, which causes climate change, which causes catastrophic events to occur. Even wind turbines are honestly a net bad for the environment, because it takes so much metal and coal to build them. Even once they’re up and running, they kill a lot of bats and birds, and are also just a general eyesore on the plains (though, of course, wind turbines are far less detrimental to the environment than fracking and coal burning. I’m not one of those “anti-wind turbine” crazies). 

Meanwhile, very few people actually do anything to truly give back to nature; to truly offset their environmental impact. Including those who pledge “veganism for the animals/environment.”

My problem with people like Peter Singer is not that they’re vegan/vegetarian. It’s that they remain so far removed from the wilderness that they do little to nothing to offset their detrimental impacts on it. That, and they simply don’t know what they’re talking about. Sure, on an intellectual level, they understand the world very well. But, they don’t know the wilderness like an avid hunter/angler knows it. They don’t know wildlife like hunters/anglers know it. They don’t know farming like a farmer knows it. 

In order for one to truly have an impact on the things they profess and discuss, I believe that they have to know it, and not just on an intellectual level. It’s one thing to know what a deer is, and general facts about deer. It’s something completely different to know what a deer is; to live around them, to watch them go about their daily lives, to experience the seasons, the elements, and the environment alongside them, to get up-close and personal to them, to look into their eyes and see their souls through the sights of a gun or a bow (or a camera). 

On a much more broader scale, I think people in academia often fail to truly know the things that they have PhD’s in. Because of that, people outside of academia often have a very hard time trusting it. After all, professors can know a lot of things, but they don’t always know the things they apparently know a lot about (of course, some do. But many don’t). And I really think that is why so many people (particularly those on the right and who live in rural places), distrust academia and “educated” people in general. I hope I’m making sense (and tying things together), even though I’m tired. 

In other words, idealists may very well be right about how the world should be. On paper, we should live in a world where everyone’s needs are met and are treated ethically, and no animals or environments are harmed in the process. But, in practice, that’s just not possible. And the people who know the wilderness understand this. 

Perfection doesn’t exist. People are flawed. Nature is ruthless. Death is both inevitable and necessary. Idealism is fun and useful until it isn’t. It just is what it is. 

But, I’m not about to just pick on professors and academics for failing to live by their own words. The average person who visits the wilderness doesn’t know how to fucking behave in the wilderness, thus damaging it and making it unbearable for anyone else (including the wildlife who depend on it) to enjoy. 

It’s precisely why I will only hike in Ken Caryl Valley (where only residents and people accompanied by residents of the Ken Caryl neighborhoods are allowed to hike), or in remote, unknown wilderness areas only accessible by experienced 4X4 drivers who know the area well, or on private land (if I have permission, of course). Otherwise, I avoid well-known touristy spots like the fucking plague.