What is Conservation Hunting?

Conservation hunting is a form of regulated hunting contributing to conservation of local wildlife populations and providing social and economic benefits to involved local communities. The Conservation Hunting (CH) website aims to provide information on current research and discussion regarding the concepts, background, scope and outcome of CH, particularly in the Canadian North, but also elsewhere. This website provides information on multidisciplinary research on CH being carried out by researchers at the Canadian Circumpolar Institute and their research partners and collaborators in the North and at other research centres. This website is maintained as an interactive tool, inviting feedback and reports from others involved and/or interested in CH activities, in order to contribute to research, conservation, and sustainable development initiatives more particularly in northern regions. We invite input from all CH stakeholders, including researchers in various disciplines, wildlife managers, co-managers, policy advisers, hunters, outfitters, and conservationists.

About Conservation Hunting:

The term 'conservation hunting' is now applied to sport or recreational hunting when those hunts result in definite conservation and social benefits. Conservation hunting (CH) is considered a form of regulated hunting that provides diverse conservation benefits to both local wildlife populations and to rural communities. CH is appropriately applied to all animals subjected to hunting for recreation, management, food and other culturally-significant purposes. A number of international environmental conventions and organizations recognize that the regulated sustainable use of wildlife provides economic incentives that contribute to biodiversity conservation and cultural sustainability. Wildlife-derived economic incentives and the resulting economic diversification may serve to protect wildlife habitat and cultural practices from the damaging impacts of alternative land use practices, especially at a time when such activities may place an additional burden on human and biological communities subject to climatic and other environmental stressors. CH involves reallocation of local wildlife resources to non-resident hunters, a reallocation that may be subject to intense discussion in some northern communities. Conservation hunting given its socio-economic and cultural contributions to local communities, has the potential to contribute to human adaptation in the changing world.

Also look at the Key Components of a CH Program: