Geography Reference
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market in wildlife commodities inevitably spelled doom, North America would long ago
have extirpated its foxes, martens, and raccoons.
8
Further, the system that Geist has so strongly defended, in which dead wildlife can be
used domestically in a subsistence-mimicking sense but not sold for profit, also depends
critically on the wide acceptance among hunters of the “split-rail” ethic (what historian
John Reiger has called the “sportsman-conservationist ideal”). This ethic itself is a
descendent of the European tradition of the gentleman-hunter, but—importantly—was
further developed in North America from a creed that served to reinforce notions of an
aristocracy that excluded most citizens from access to wildlife, to an egalitarian philosophy
that explicitly embraced wide and classless participation. Equally noteworthy is that this
split-rail ethic developed alongside then-nascent efforts to protect and manage huge tracts
of public land in both Canada and the United States, lands that were, and largely remain,
devoid of permanent human occupation. Neither the ethic of the exclusive European
gentleman-hunter nor that of the citizen sportsman-conservationist has any resonance
within the culture of western China (neither the politically empowered Han, nor the nu-
merically dominant Buddhist or Islamic cultures). And as I have shown, relatively little
land, even in remote western China, is managed as a public commons upon which any
Chinese version of the split-rail ethic might play out. In contrast, markets for wildlife
products are highly developed in China. Interest in wild products is not restricted to the
wealthy, but rather has deep roots in cultures that many already wish to defend against
what they perceive as forces of global homogenization.
These factors lead me to question the assumed impossibility of effective wildlife con-
servation in the presence of commerce. The Pandora's box that Geist and other theorists
of conservation in a Western setting would prefer remain closed has, in China, long since
been opened. But if economic benefits from wild products can be channeled in a way that
enhances the value of undeveloped, wild land (land that is otherwise at risk of having its
primary productivity appropriated entirely for use by people), perhaps there is a case to
be made that commercial use of some free-ranging wildlife species can simultaneously
support cultural mores and wildlife conservation.
9
Here, as in my subsistence hunting model above, I suggest that there are competing
risks and values that ought to be weighed against one another in assessing the overall
wisdom of legitimizing a commercial harvest (see Figure 10.2). Clearly, the risk of
overharvest is related to the biological properties of the animal population. The lower-
left axis of Figure 10.2 integrates both the factors of inherent population density and
resource renewal rate (used in Figure 10.1) into a single biological concern. Because
there will always be risks, I would contend that the type and amount of cultural ben-
efit to be obtained also be considered (lower-right axis, Figure 10.2). If the cultural
benefits from the wild product are high and available to many, higher biological risks
may be acceptable. Conversely, only the very lowest biological risks may be worth
incurring if commercial use provides something of value only to a very few. Finally,
because it is inevitable that market failure will occur in the absence of some type of
clear property rights (i.e., by not transferring the value obtained by the consumer to the
maintenance of wild habitats), the ability to control harvest levels and ensure integrity
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