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magazine / dec09
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December 2009 issue |
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EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK
From game to wildlife
“Canada has the great good fortune to be particularly rich in bird life,
and it is a matter for congratulation that both the Federal and Provincial
Governments and the public behind those governments have been
sufficiently alive to the importance of preserving these feathered friends
to set apart a number of sanctuaries and in other ways afford protection
to many species which are of economic value and others that by the beauty
of their form and plumage or the charm of their song add enormously to
the happiness of our homes.”
Stories about wildlife have been integral to this
magazine since its creation eight decades ago. From the
inaugural issue’s 16-page section featuring colourful bird
paintings accompanied by a quaint text (excerpted above) by Percy
A. Taverner, the National Museum of Canada’s first ornithologist,
to the all-wildlife 80th-anniversary issue you hold in your hands,
Canadian Geographic’s contributors have always understood that
geography includes animals too. In transforming our annual
Wildlife Stories of the Year package into something broader by
layering on an 80-year perspective, we can examine the evolution
of how we at the top of the predator chain have perceived and
persecuted and protected the animals we share the world with.
Canada has a long and oft-cited tradition of nature writers
— Miner, Belaney, Mowat, Russell, Marty, Gayton, Payton,
Savage — who have pondered and produced insightful works
examining the subtleties and complexities of the wilderness
and all that lives in it. One of the most important recent
contributions to this body of thought is historian Tina Loo’s
States of Nature: Conserving Canada’s Wildlife in the Twentieth
Century. Her academic but accessible book traces the evolution
of wildlife management philosophy in Canada, examining
its historical, social and political origins and arguing that
certain individuals — Taverner among them — have had
profound impacts on how we individually and collectively think about our love-shoot relationship with wildlife.
Loo recounts, for example, that three years after Never Cry
Wolf was published in 1963, James Hatter, head of the British
Columbia government’s Fish and Game Branch, renamed it
Fish and Wildlife. Yes, it’s a small semantic change, says Loo,
but it was rooted in the same attitude shift that made Mowat’s
book a best-seller: an appreciation of wildlife less as a resource
we’re entitled to harvest wilfully and more as an integral part
of the environment with inherent ecological value.
Today, that seems so obvious. But, as essayist Brian Payton
notes in this issue, flash back 80 years, or 40 years, or even one
year, and you will find, in Canadian Geographic and in society at
large, myriad stories of wanton entitlement by humans believing
that unlimited numbers of animals were put on Earth simply for
us to hunt, be it for larders, corsets or trophies. Fortunately, you
will also find many stories of innovative thinkers who have
led us to appreciate the interrelatedness and vulnerability
of species and ecosystems and whose discoveries have led to
generations of ecologically minded biologists, conservationists
and citizens dedicating themselves to understanding the
minutiae and enriching the health of the planet’s wild life.
How do we reintroduce a species that’s been wiped
out? Where does the world’s largest mammal hide? How does
an osprey teach its offspring to fish? Why must the Arctic
tern migrate 40,000 kilometres a year? How do we adapt our
notion of wildlife sanctuaries in anticipation of an onslaught of
climate-change refugees? One issue of a magazine can’t answer
all these questions, but it can make a difference by asking.
— Eric Harris
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