I am often asked why I decided to specialize in environmental law. Not many folks with my political perspective choose to do so; environmental law is hardly a "glamor" subject on the political right.
My primary answer is that I find environmental law very challenging and rewarding because of the nature of the trade-offs involved. On the one hand, environmental law concerns our efforts to protect human health and the world around us. Failure to provide for environmental protection can leave the world a less safe, less vibrant, and less beautiful place. On the other hand, because environmental concerns are ubiquitous, environmental law itself can pose a serious threat to individual liberty. Today, environmental protection is probably the only intellectually respectable basis for urging policies that amount to central planning. As I see it, the stakes are enormous on both sides, making this a challenging and important field, and one that is worth far more serious attention from those who generally prefer limited government.
Of course, there are other reasons I enjoy environmental law that are more difficult to put into words. I was reminded of this yesterday when I landed a 21-inch brown trout while floating through Paradise Valley on the Yellowstone River. Such experiences give me a connection to my work that are difficult to articulate.
[For those who are curious, I caught the trout on a fly rod using flies with pinched barbs, and all fish were returned to the river properly so as to ensure their survival. I don't fish for trout any other way.]
Related Posts (on one page):
- Why Environmental Law?
- Blogging under the Big Sky:
eat what you catch
it's all good
respect
Because they're delicious.
Sorry.
I am often annoyed at envrionmentalist because they way they justify bad policy is to downplay the value of activities that hurt the environment. Instead they should work on proving the high value of the environment (which I think it has).
that said, i can't resist a repetition of Scott Adams's response to the whole catch-and-release philosophy...
so you say you torture fish for fun?
As for a picture, I haven't quite figured out how to size and post one, but perhaps I'll have to send some to Eugene for posting -- not just of the fish, but also of the vistas. For those who've never been here, there really is a reason Montana is called "Big Sky Country."
JHA
Damned if I could ever figure it out, but it was a living (grin). It was the sacred goal of the ESA to conserve all species. And subspecies. And distinct populations.
Never even did figure out what a species was, either. One "splitter" biologist explained that in his view Scandanvians and Italians were separate species, since they rarely interbreed in nature (the legal test -- they *can*, but don't very often). Splitters saw every tiny variation in appearance or behavior as making a different species. Of course with an intfinite number of species, you have a high probability of each going extinct. You probably wiped out a few the last time you sprayed weed killer. The ESA lists cover plants, animals, clams, mussels, you name it. In theory, microrganisms, too, but nobody's pushed it that far, or each year's flu strain would probably have to be listed (hmm... is a virus a member of the animal kingdom? I forget now).
Fishing with DuPont hooks! Remember to use a 10 second fuse for fishing along the bottom.
After all, sportfishing amounts to animal cruelty whichever way you look at it (of course so does a mountain lion killing a deer, I wonder what they're going to do about that).
Would you still like the consequences on your life of environmental law were that to happen?
I think you're confusing environmentalism with animal welfare.
As for your novel analogy to a mountain lion killing a deer... I'm always slightly amused when somebody trots that one out. What exactly is the argument? Is it that because some animals suffer in nature, we therefore have carte blanche to commit gratuitous acts of cruelty ourselves? How does that work exactly?
I think many animal welfare advocates would probably say that they're more interested in going after the low-hanging fruit before considering relatively esoteric questions like the treatment of wild animals by other wild animals. An example of "low hanging fruit" would be working to improve the lives of millions of animals raised in inhuman conditions in "factory farms." If it ever gets to a point where the biggest challenge in animal welfare is protecting wild deer from mountain lions, we'll be light years ahead of where we are today, but at present, that issue is simply a red herring.
Hmm... that is suspicious. When you are hungry and it is lunchtime, you eat what you catch -- male or female.
I was thinking the catch and release technique -- as with many fisherman -- was because the good proffy was squeamish about cleaning fish. Glad that's not true. You'd be missing out. (You do clean and cook your own, and not have a guide do it for you, right?)
Absolute unmitigated bullshit. Human beings always have been, and always will be, an integral part of the ecosystem.
OK, hard guy. It was not by accident that I put the word ecosystem in quotation marks. Yes, the laws of physics and chemistry apply to humans just as they apply to everything else. But that is not what most people mean when they talk of "the ecosystem." They mean the assemblage of plants and animals in the area where they live. If a new road or bridge or shopping center is proposed some of them will be up in arms about damage to the ecosystem. Perhaps a species will be reduced, maybe even an endangered species, because critical habitat will be destroyed. But the lives of most human beings will not be upset. Very few of us, if any, are worse off simply because the furbish lousewort is wiped out. You can say the lousewort adds to our quality of life, but all the same we do not depend on it. Adler began this thread by telling us about troutfishing in Montana. If the trout became depleted, this would be a problem for him and his fellow anglers but it would not be a disaster. Some human concerns are more important than the prevalence of trout in a Montana stream. I'm sure that in his work in environmental law Adler has to deal with this kind of question.
The separation of humans from Nature, implied by my pane-of-glass metaphor, has been increasing for a long time, probably since the development of agriculture if not earlier. In fact there is an interesting book by Shepard Krech III (an anthropologist) called The Ecological Indian which describe how Indians often did violence to the ecosystem in an effort to survive. They started forest fires, killed buffalo in much larger numbers than they needed and left the rest to rot, and from time to time exterminated beaver in various regions in their zeal to supply traders with as many pelts as possible.
Today we are much further removed from Nature than the Indians were. We have built cities and and made food available in far greater abundance than unassisted Nature could ever provide, not to mention lengthening the human lifespan and making life vastly more secure. Without doubt we are all the healthier and happier for it. All of this has been to shield ourselves from the vagaries of the sacred ecosystem. God, what a lot of cliches I have to spout! You see, I've got to get through a lot of absolute unmitigated bullshit.
No, many of them are (or claim to be) both and see the banning of all hunting, fishing, and eventually lifestock and pet ownership as a fundamental part of "returning to a natural state".
Of course many will also happily sit down to a dinner of fresh caught trout or grilled T-bone steak.
"As for your novel analogy to a mountain lion killing a deer... I'm always slightly amused when somebody trots that one out. What exactly is the argument? Is it that because some animals suffer in nature, we therefore have carte blanche to commit gratuitous acts of cruelty ourselves? How does that work exactly? "
No, the argument is quite the reverse. If a human can't go hunt an animal and kill it with minimal pain (a single well placed bullet for example, or a quick tap on the head of a fish), why should we allow animals to kill each other cruelly?
A mountain lion will slowly suffocate its prey, which may take a long time.
A wolf will start devouring large prey animals while they're still alive, bleeding the prey out.
A Komodo dragon's bite can take days to kill, causing death by bloodloss and fatal wound infection.
Surely such excesses should not be allowed to happen to poor bambi?
In interior, we tortured fish and wildlife out of duty only!
After the Exxon Valdez tanker skill, a bunch of biologists sent in for grant proposals to study the effects on widllife. One proposal was to kill a bunch of different migratory birds, soak them in oil, and throw them in the water, thereby estimating how many dead wildlife drifted out to sea without being counted.
Another was to study effects on sea otter reproduction. He proposed to obtain semen samples by electro-ejaculation, in which a probe is put up the fundamental orifice, a clamp applied to the male hydraulics, and a electrical charge is sent between the two. Then he'd study their gonads by taking samples with a hollow needle.
The attorney reviewing the proposal said "Isn't this what they do to dissidents in third world countries?" I said the research might have another benefit: we would discover whether otters could talk. After they dealt with the first one, the others would be trying to spill the beans. "It's June 6, 1944. They're hitting the beach at Normandy, not Calais. Code name is Operation Overlord."
Pinching the barb of the hook, on the other hand, does reduce harm to the fish (and make it significantly more difficult to land the fish). The method of release can also affect the fish's likelihood of survival.
In the end, I care more about ensuring the survival of given species and distinct populations than I do about the welfare of individual members of the species or population, and this view informs both my wildlife conservation policy preferences and my private wildlife-related recreation activities.
JHA
Take your blinders off.