In praise of swift fox fur

[Guest]

www.hegoldbergfurs.com

 

This place sells swift fox fur. This fur is silky soft and the colors are just beautiful. I prefer feeling it to red fox.

[Guest]

The problem is minkwoman that the Swift fox is endangered. As its fur is NOT considered by the fur industry as a prized fur (its coarse) then again we have to ask WHY it is endangered? Again its habitat problems.

 

However what little trade there is in swift fox is likely to be as the result of native peoples, who value it traditionally for ceremonial purposes, so do not understand the west's aversion to it in favour of thicker softer fox.

 

Here is a good article:

http://www.hww.ca/hww2.asp?id=105&cid=8

 

If those people who profess to care about animals look at the map they will notice that the present range of the Swift fox is limited TO areas where hunting and fur trade are the main economy...specially re native peoples. This suggests that fur trade and hunting are a great conservation aid. The complete absence of the swift fox from urban and agricultural areas shows the real threat to them .

[LordTheNightKnight]

Even if it's habitat problems, it is good for the fur industry to make efforts not to make it worse. That shows more environmental responsibility than PETA.

[Guest]

Acknowledged; howver thinking how common the kit fox once was, and how common it still is in hunting/fur trapping areas , coupled with the fact that it is a fur little favoured by the furriers, it is another prime example of how blame is all too easily assigned to hunters/trappers.

 

How many times to we hear that beaver was driven to brink of extinction by fur trade? Then look at the evidence, and see that it is still common in fur/hunting areas where hunters, aboriginal peoples etc protect its habitats. It is destruction of habitat because of logging and development and the fact that they dam causing flooding means they are not tolerated...often by people who would be anti fur ironically.

 

How many years was "overkill" blamed on primitive man? The explanation of mammoth extinction one archeologist suggested that he would have needed 100 times his population and the new "spear" technology would've had to have been more like an AK47 to cause it. Now we know of course it was climate change; drastic habitat alteration over a few hundred years.

But still many people believe the overkill theory.

 

But yes....certainly the fur industry and hunting are generally Conservation minded. Shame that the rest of society isn't when the truth that habitat destruction is the real cause is revealed.

[LordTheNightKnight]

Just one thing, you seem to be looking at the beaver trapping today. It's tempered now because they did it too much back then. And this was before any other environmental factors came in. So it is an example of fur trading done wrong.

 

That doesn't mean the fur trade is bad; it just means it's run by people, and people often have to make mistakes to learn. Denying this would be trying to imply the fur trade is perfect, and never can do any wrong.

[Guest]

No I agree...but remember that the hunters were brought in to clear area of beaver for development (and still are) much in the same way that buffalo were destroyed: the fur wasn't the primary motive. Nobody living in a city in Canada that exterminated beaver should really have the nerve to criticise say a Cree beaver trapper in Saskatchewan. Now incidentally the Cree will go and collect nuisance beaver and rehome them. What I am saying is habitat factors and development are usually a far greater threat.

Beaver never really declined in aboriginal areas for example.

 

Same as fox in the UK. For 150 years the local Hunt has hunted particular area. Thre were always foxes. Now the government have banned it, but six years ago a huge area was developed so that took a quarter of the Hunts land anyway. The result is that urban foxes too have sharply declined as they are now completely cut off from the countryside; and the only juvenile I have seen was deformed; suggesting a small gene pool. There are no foxes left of course in the area that was formerly countryside. Yet where the Hunt still operates, there are hundreds of foxes.

 

Then consider the Hunter of the Pyrenees who hunted rabbit and lynx for food and fur for gnerations. It was he who screamed loudest when sudenly he noticed he was coming home empty handed: the cuplrit: arable agricultrual change. Hares need specific kind of trrain, and it was changed.

Lynx starved; unable to ven get the sheep and goats as the farmers turned to arable.

 

Elephant and leopard survived being hunted for ivory and fur: since they have been protected they have declined sharply: farmers will not tolerate elephants trampling crops and coffee pickers won't tolerate their children being found have eaten up trees because the coffe crop has displaced the leopards natural prey. Thn in other areas over protecton of leopard and lion have put the cheetah on the brink of extinction EXCEPT in big game hunting reserves where it is thriving.

 

It is this simple. IF you make your living from furbearers it is in your interest to make sure there are lots of them. And IF you have alternative economic activity by humans, this could cause habitat change and endanger them.

 

What people do not realise for example is that foxes are ENCOURAGED by UK Hunts. They make it so that nobody touches them out of season, that their coverts are protected (which aslo affords protectio to badgers. And what happens when the bulldozrs move in encouraged by a government that prtends to care? The coverts go. And with it, many other species like newts with flood plain reclamation for intensive agriculture, and birds with crop spraying, and squirrel with woodland canopy destruction.

 

Every year the Cree watch the beaver and hope they will be plentiful. They therefore are in constant battle with people like hydro electric power companies. The same with the Sami and the loggers and with the Evenk and oil pipleine companies.

 

Now okay....we have to have progress. BUT when those advocating it encourages anti fur anti hunting propaganda....you have to question that.

Society has and is blaming the wrong people and its very difficult to get that point across to the public. On the other hand however, the way that REAL Conservationists work with Hunting peoples to protect habitats (even like woodland and wetlands for shooting people; the protection gives protection to thousands of non target species too) means that eventually Incntive Conservation will HAVE to be adopted as the best working model.

 

One large Golf Course kills double the wildlife (moles rabbits etc) than all the Hunts in the UK put together. And that is fine (I don't like it but hey each to their own...I can't see why a mole hill can't be a natural obstacle though) but then when you get some twerp playing golf who says hunting is cruel you can see how it can be annoying.