I'm Travis Bader and this is The
Silvercore Podcast.
Join me as I discuss matters related to
hunting, fishing, and outdoor pursuits
with the people in businesses that comprise
of the community.
If you're a new to Silvercore, be sure to
check out our website, www.Silvercore.ca where
you can learn more about courses, services, and
products that we offer.
As well as how you can join The Silvercore Club,
which includes 10 million in North America wide
liability insurance, to ensure you are properly
covered during your outdoor adventures.
On the last podcast, I mentioned the
life-changing giveaway that we will be doing
with SMART Fire Academy, where one lucky person
will win a full tuition paid scholarship to be
trained as a firefighter.
Follow us on social media and watch for
the details in our April 1st announcement.
Today, I'm excited to be joined by the president
of Conservation Visions and founder of the Wild
Harvest initiative.
World-renowned conservation it's Shane
Mahoney, Shane possesses, a rare combination
of conservationists scientists, historian,
and philosopher.
Shane is a gifted order and insightful
thinker with a profound commitment to wild
nature, rural societies into the sustainable
use of Earth's natural resources,
Shane, welcome to The Silvercore Podcast.
Well, thank you very much.
It's a great question to be here and I'm
looking forward to our conversation.
As am I.
Now I don't wish to recapitulate your many
accolades and there are many as others
have very eloquently done that before me.
So instead I will, I'm going to have
a complete bio on our website for our
listeners to reference.
The Silvercore Podcast is about sharing our
passions with others.
What I'd really hoped to achieve with this podcast
is to distill your almost palpable enthusiasm
for conservation and communicate that to our
listeners in a way that makes a somewhat nebulous
concept, more tangible.
And second, I would like to learn more about the
Wild Harvest Initiative.
So with that said, growing up, I don't know
anyone who's naturally inclined towards
conservation as that concept doesn't tend
to enter the mind until there's a realization
of what could be lost.
And it had me wondering, when did you start
your journey as a conservationist and
what sparked it?
Well, I think you're right in one sense that,
um, you know, individuals don't begin, even in
their explorations of nature of thinking
about conservation.
But I think very early in a child's exploration of
nature, the ingredients for a conservation
awareness is born.
Um, it really starts with some basic elements.
Um, one is the fascination with other
living things, whether they be insects or
sticklebacks or frogs or whatever it might be,
butterflies and bees.
Um, and the other, I think is just a sense
of a rare combination of love and adventure
that seem to emerge simultaneously, at almost
every, any level of engagement with nature.
So a young child, um, engaging in the
natural world, maybe catching small trout
or catching insects or catching frogs.
You know, if you were to ask that little human,
why aren't you doing it?
Uh, they probably shrug and say something
like, it's fun.
It wouldn't get into a detailed explanation
of breaking fun down.
But fun generally is something that makes you
feel good, something that makes you happy, uh, and
something that you'd like to have a lot more of.
And so I think in fact, the road to conservation
can begin extremely early, but I don't
think it always has to, it can start, it can
come to people later in their lives, too.
And part of that is a sweepstake, you know,
uh, where you were born, uh, what opportunities
you had to be in nature.
Um, who your parents were, who
your friends were.
Um, my particular case, um, my path was in
fact established almost from the womb because I
grew up in a very rural place, I grew up in a
very isolated place.
And for those earliest of early years, being
a part of nature was very easy because it
was all around us.
You stepped out of your door and that's
where you were.
And I lived in a culture in Newfoundland
where people lived by harvesting wildlife,
fish, they were fishermen, primarily.
They raised some animals, of course,
for livestock purposes.
And we all had gardens.
And so the lifestyle was very much one of
self-sufficiency and rhythms that were
determined by nature.
And so even as a young child, you began to
understand the rhythms of nature, when trout
could be caught in the small streams.
And when tadpoles would disappear under the
mud and when certain bird species would
no longer be around.
So I spent my earliest days engaged in
nature, catching eels, catching, catching other
fishes off wharves.
Uh, you know, surveying tiny little streams
that I thought were massive rivers, you
know, and learning about the muskrats
and the mink and other things that were there.
So as a boy of three to five, I mean,
this is what I did.
So I am sort of the exception to the rule
perhaps, in that, that was what my life was and
in a very true sense, my life has never changed.
Right.
I went on to become a man.
I, you know, took degrees at universities.
I became a research biologist.
I worked with, uh, bear and caribou and moose and
lynx and coyotes so on.
And did all of those exciting things that
people see, you know, and started some of them.
I mean, the radio calling programs, you
know, the, the jumping out of helicopters.
The immobilizing of bears and their dens,
you know, all of these kinds of things.
Climbing the cliff faces to study sea birds, which
I've worked on for a long time and being around
the sea, a great deal is a very emotionally
charged and life-changing thing anyway.
And so I came into it in a sense from the
womb, uh, I was born into that circumstance.
I lived that circumstance, I loved
that circumstance.
And two things came out of that experience.
One was more than a fascination, but as I
said earlier, a love for wild things that are
real belief, they, they were part of my life,
the frogs I caught and kept to the insects.
I kept and tried to keep alive.
All of the things I did that way, they were part
of, I spent more time looking after them in my
family, then I certainly spent looking after my
sisters and brother.
And so, uh, it transitioned after a
while from fascination to something of love.
And as I went on my reading binges as
a very early boy, I was a voracious early
reader and continued that through my
university days and to the present day.
All of that love and fascination for wild
things and any animal actually, not just wild.
Um, you know, I got to live it out in
my research career in wilderness areas
for years and years, I spent massive
amounts of time alone.
Uh, and ultimately I came to a point in
my life where I, now my fundamental creed,
my Celtic belief, if you will, so I
am an Irish citizen as well uh, is that
there is no difference between us and them.
Mmm.
I see absolutely no difference between us.
We're different, we're all different.
The Zebra is different from the horse.
The man is different from the whale and the whale
is different from the great eight, but I don't
buy into any of the ideas that we have dominion,
that we have superiority.
Some of our talents are superior, in some ways to
the talents of animals, some of animals talents
are superior to others.
And yet, despite the fact that I believe all
of this to be true, I also firmly believe in
the, in the lifestyle of sustainable use.
In the harvesting of wild things, the utilization
of wild things, and people will often ask
me, who know me well, particularly anti-hunting
organizations who know me quite well.
How is it that I can still hunt and
fish given the fact that I have these
very strong opinions about, um, animals.
And I explained to them that the primary
issue here is not whether I love them.
The primary issue is that I am one of them and
that the laws of nature are not made for all the
other species and then a separate law made for us.
There's only one series of laws of nature, and
all of us demand the same things from the
environment we live in.
We need clean air, clean water, we need food.
We need some sense of freedom, all
animals seek it.
And if you deny it to any animal, including
the human animal, you abirate, you change,
you deconstruct, you dis you just disassemble,
uh, the health processes of the animal.
We all know this to be true, something
else we all share.
And, uh, so I simply can see no honest way
of living than to live as the animal I am and
being the animal I am to live in this complicated
world of harvesting other animals and plants and
berries and fruits and so on from the natural
world, as much as I can, in modern time.
Um, and I don't have any moral or ethical
uh, problems with that, but I certainly
do have emotionally, emotional tensions over
the killing of things.
And so while I have hunted extensively,
uh, it is never a simple thing.
And I have very little, if any respect for people
who hunt or fish and who treat animals as
simply targets and who seem to believe that
they don't feel the bullet the same as we do.
Uh, they do feel the bullet exactly the
same as we do, exactly the same as you would.
But again, none of that can change the fact that
the laws of nature, the laws of ecology are what
they are and I would sooner harvest as much of
my food from the wild as I can, I'm very fortunate
to be able to do that.
Not every one in the world can.
And I also feel very deeply that the animals
we raise for food ought to be raised
in a very caring and ethical manner as far
as humanely possible.
I absolutely agree.
What do you currently see as some of the
biggest challenges to the lifestyle of
sustainable use of our wildlife and resources?
Well, there are many, some of them are just
mega issues, there are there, there are
overreaching issues that are not in any
sense, usually local.
So for example, the sheer number of human
beings that we have on the planet is really
causing disruptions to all lifestyles almost.
Sure.
Um, whether one has retreated to cities
or moves out to the suburbs or wherever
one goes, the sheer numbers of people and
the amount of industrial infrastructure that is
necessary to service the basic needs of
those people is creating of course, a massive
problem for everyone and the sustainable
use lifestyle, some of its components are
healthy because they're absolutely essential.
So, all international fisheries are sustainable
use activities, and nobody is dreaming of
stopping them because the, you know, half
the world would starve immediately if we did so.
On the other hand, sustainable use
activities that some of your listeners might
be thinking about, you know, their own
activities of hunting moose, or elk, or bear
or turkeys or waterfowl, or fishing for bass or
Lake trout or salmon, or, you know, Whitefish
or whatever it might be.
Some of those tend to get quite a bit more
attention sometimes because people see
them as unnecessary.
They see them as a little bit, you know,
you could go to the grocery store chain, you
could buy all your meat from another source.
You could get all of your berries and
fruits from there.
You don't really have to go out into the wild
and do those things.
And so that's one part of it where people see,
why don't you be like the rest of the world?
The majority of the world, living in urban
centers and simply go and get your food that way.
And then there are the iconic issues.
So the international hunters going to places
like Africa or central Asia to hunt iconic
species, such as, you know, elephant or lion
or something of this nature, which causes a
massive backlash amongst a lot of people and
even more locally, such as British Columbia.
Mmm.
The idea of harvesting iconic species, such
as grizzly bear, for example, uh, or now in
New Mexico, there are bills to end all trapping
on public lands to end all black bear hunting
in the current session, which will probably pass.
We have this, this international arena
talking about far away, you know, people hunting
animals, and then we have local issues,
particularly with carnivores, like bears
and wolves, especially, where people just say,
why are you doing that?
And if you're not eating them, then I really
don't think you should be doing this at all.
And so it's the combination of
those things.
You know, society never stays the same.
Society in the 1930s, forties and fifties,
didn't host this array of opinion.
There were some people who felt these ways,
but not as extensively, but in the early decades
of the two thousands.
Now we are into the year 2021, we can expect many
of these attitudes to be more openly discussed.
We can look to see more legislation coming
forward, but at the same time, I will predict
that we will also see a countercurrent.
That movement against hunting and things of
that nature has moved on enough, matured enough
that now you're starting to see second guessing
on the part of people, counter reactions to
some of that thinking starting to take place,
where for example, people are saying.
You elsewhere should not dictate the lives
of people who live in these rural and
local circumstances.
And that too is becoming a global phenomenon.
So we are going to witness in the next
decade, in particular and the next two decades
perhaps, a really strong countercurrent
exchange between animal welfare, animal rights,
hunting, sustainable use, uh, lifestyles
and so on and so forth.
It's, uh, it's a, it's a combination of all of
those things that are happening and you know,
people in the hunting and, and, and sustainable
use space need to realize something.
They need to realize several things.
They need to realize that this issue of whether
we will sustainably use nature is tied up
with politics, it's tied up with social
attitudes, it's tied up with economics.
It's tied up with, uh, you know, the
kinds of, uh, cultural traditions that people
have grown up with.
It's based on so many complicated factors.
We tend to try to want to control the easy ones.
Oh, and I don't know if people are
hunting and fishing.
Hey, let's get more people out there hunting
and fishing, good idea, nothing wrong with it.
I have no problem with that, but that is not
going to provide us with the insight to know
about how we're going to keep sustainable use
harvesting, going in the longterm and the
debates over whether we can do that or not
are not going away.
We're going to have to deal with
those increasingly.
Mhmm.
You know, I, I have been seeing a shift
here in the last few years, particularly
with COVID recently.
There's been, I think they call it the
locavore diet or the a hundred mile diet or
the desire for people to start harvesting their
own food locally and in a sustainable way.
So we've been seeing that trend growing
in the cities.
And with COVID coming in, there's been a lot
of people that have been scared about what
they read and see in the media and that
fear will instill in them the desire for
self-sufficiency.
And we're seeing, on the firearms side, there's
gun stores are reporting massive increases in
the amount of sales that they're making,
as well as interest in basic outdoor survival
and safety, hunting, self-sufficiency.
I have been watching a trend prior to COVID
that seems to accelerated because of COVID and
I have to wonder how this conversation is
evolving around hunting and the sustainable
use of our resources.
Is it going to, uh, evolve essentially
in spite of us?
There is a desire to get more people
out there hunting.
There is a desire to have, change the way that
we talk about hunting and harvesting animals.
Uh, we don't want to call it a sport, we
don't want to call it recreation, even though
we, in our province of British Columbia, it is
listed under the sports and recreation section of
the provincial website.
With the correct information, we can
start making some correct decisions about how
we progress with this.
And I believe that's the intention of the
Wild Harvest Initiative, is to pool as much
information as you can so that you can at
least let the data speak for itself to hunters
and non hunters alike.
Am I correct in that understanding?
Yeah.
If you are in card, correct.
In that, I mean, I think, I think ultimately the
Wild Harvest Initiative was built out of the
very kinds of reflections that you and I have been
sharing on this podcast.
First of all, a relatively small
percentage of society really cares about
conservation, only a small percentage.
You ask a survey of course, to people over
the phone, and everybody will say they're
concerned about it.
But the proof of the matter is that only,
at this point in time, a relatively small
percentage of the population is concerned
about conservation.
Secondly, those that are concerned
about conservation are deeply divided.
So you have people who hunt and you have people
who fish, and people who berry pick, and people
who love wilderness, and people who will hike,
and people who snowboard, and people who kayak
and blah, blah, blah.
And they certainly don't all share
all the same views.
So here we have a problem of the big
conservation vacancy that we need to fill.
And we have a relatively small number of people
who are interested in it.
And in that box of relatively small
number of people, most of them are
inside with like this.
I see that a lot.
And it's for the listers, you had your, your hands
in a pugilist stance.
Yeah.
So, you know, this is what we're up against.
And I have seen almost nothing in the last
30 years to move us away from that.
Well, I've seen hunter retention and recruitment
efforts, and I've seen people say we all
should talk together and I've seen various
efforts of that kind, but show me the meetings
that are taking place.
Show me the programs that have years behind them.
Show me the circumstances where this is
actually changing.
And they're very few, they're very rare and
they're very localized.
And you can go across the breadth of Canada
to try to find this and you might have a certain
committee, you know, funded by a government
agency or something that, you know, by
virtue of its funding, forces people to come
together or something.
But by and large, you simply do not have this
happening organically.
Well, the motto on my website is one, you know,
one natural world, one humanity and one chance.
Cause that's what I believe it is.
And so I wanted to find some way, I spent 33
years as leading research teams, publishing
in journals, setting up an Institute, you
know, doing all those kinds of things.
And that wasn't getting the job done.
It was giving us a lot of knowledge about
bears and caribou and moose and predator prey
interactions and all that and that was all good.
But this wasn't doing anything about
building a broader conservation community
to advance conservation.
So I started to think about, okay,
what are the issues?
What are the issues that fit into these
two categories, at the same time?
Number one, there are issues that everybody,
if you discuss it with them will care about,
and number two are issues that are already
public in society they're already manifest.
And what of those issues could be helpful in
building a community for conservation?
And I landed, surprisingly, on the
idea of wild food and wild harvesting.
Why?
Because everyone is concerned about healthy
food, more and more people are concerned
every day about healthy food, the world over.
That was not true 25 years ago, it
is true today.
And more and more people are also concerned
about their own physical health, their longevity
and their fitness then was true 25 years ago.
And these trends are escalating in society
by any measure.
Number of cookbooks, number of people in
fitness programs, number of people,
taking yoga, number of people cooking at home.
Number of people with small gardens,
number of people in the locavore movement.
Number of people buying organic, number of
people complaining about hormones and additives
into the food systems that they have, the fear
that people have over GMO products, et cetera.
There is so much evidence to indicate that this is
a fundamental movement in society and the
sustainable use movement has spent its entire
lifetime fighting against the social trends that
it thought were damaging.
The people who didn't like hunting or the
people that didn't like hunting carnivores
and people that didn't like one form of use
or another catch and release fishing or
whatever it might be.
I wanted to find a way to work with factors
in society that we're moving in our directions
that I could capture and be positive about.
I like that.
So my effort is the antithesis of what
has been going on.
And I was part of what was going on
for a long time.
So I know what was going on.
This is the antithesis of what was going on.
Working with societies change to build more
change, not trying to stand up and hold my
hands against the changes in society, which is
a fruitless exercise.
I agree.
So I can see this idea of food.
And then I started to think about,
all right well, how much food is there?
How much food do we harvest?
And the answer to that question
was, no one knows.
So a hundred years after we start the
North American model of conservation, no one
in Canada, no one in the United States can
answer you the following basic questions.
How many species of fish and wildlife do
we harvest in Canada in the United States?
How many individuals from all those species
do we harvest in Canada and the United States?
What is the food amount of the harvest
of all those fish and wildlife in the United
States and Canada?
What is the economic value of all of that
food so that it becomes meaningful to politicians
as a discussion point.
And what would it cost tomorrow if the 40
to 45 million hunters and anglers in Canada
and the United States, didn't acquire this
food on their own and required that food from
the grocery store isles?
How much more wildlife habitat, how much more
fertilizer, how much for more petrol, how much
more land, how much more environmental intrusion
would be necessary to actually provide that?
Now every one of those arguments will resonate
with the people who are concerned about their
health, are concerned about the quality
of their food, are concerned about how long
they're going to live and how good they're
going to look and how healthy their lungs
are going to be and on and on and on and on.
And for some, how much wildlife is there going
to be in the world that they get a chance to see?
How clean water be, how healthy will our land be?
How lovely will our forest look, all those
kinds of questions.
So I set out to do this and four years into
this program uh, we are now the custodians of
the largest knowledge base in the temporary
world on the harvest of wildlife and fish.
We continue to work on this, we're adding
new data all the time.
We are adding new players all the
time, new partners.
Uh, we have succeeded.
We have the government of Texas, the government of
Florida, the government of Arizona, the
government of Nevada, the government of Wyoming,
the government of Alaska.
The governments already partners in this.
We have the gorillas, if you will, of the,
of the industry world, the outdoor industry
world, Bass Pro, and Cabela's, that empire.
Johnny Morris himself personally, they are a
major supporter of this.
We have the supporter in Leupold, the great family
owned optics company.
Uh, Sitka clothing, uh, Mystery Ranch,
et cetera, et cetera.
So we have big players in the industry side of
this, on the NGO side, we have an enormous
array of entities going all the way from
international hunting organizations, such as
Dallas Safari Club and Wild Sheep Foundation,
all the way to the most determined, localized
North American specific hunters like Backcountry
Hunters and Anglers.
For example, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.
Uh, the US Sportsmen's Alliance.
I mean, we have just a powerhouse as
well as some private philanthropists, the
National Wildlife Federation, the
New Mexico Wildlife Federation, you know.
The list goes on.
And, uh, a lot more.
And they are all currently working and
funding with us, work to make this work happen.
And as we gather the information, of course,
we are coming out with completely novel
information on the amount of food that comes from
wild turkeys, the amount of food that comes from
mule deer, the amount of food that comes from elk.
And we can divide that up from state, by
province, by region.
And we are now giving, uh, those numbers
economic value by dealing with rating entities in
Europe and the United States, they give us,
you know, the equivalent cost if you were to sell
this in the marketplace.
And we are coming out with lists of fact sheets
that our partners can distribute everywhere.
Writing articles, obviously op-eds
appearing in magazines.
And then now we may have a television show
that may be emerging, we'll see what's
going to happen there.
The point is that even in the COVID year, We
just signed up three major new partners,
the state of Alaska, the state of Wyoming
and the Wild Sheep Foundation of Alaska
in the midst of COVID.
Wow.
So, and now we have interest from Africa.
To try and see if there is a way of bringing
this model and this program to Africa.
And of course, in the state of British
Columbia, we have the Guides and Outfitters
in British Columbia who have been partners
in this for forever.
We had hope the Wildlife Federation of British
Columbia would join.
And I still hope that someday that they
possibly they will.
But the point is that we do have some support
in, in British Columbia.
And we did have strong political support
in British Columbia.
At least when the liberals were there in
power and hopefully with the NDP there now, they
will look at this as well because look, the
ultimate idea here is to explain to people that
nature is a source of health and sustenance,
and we need to care for it because it is capable
even in the 21st century for modern societies of
providing vast amounts of healthy food as well
as recreation, as well as helpful experiences.
Nature is our free hospital.
Nature is our free pharmacy.
And so we are expanding our work now to go
beyond fish and birds and mammals, and we're
in major discussions with the US Forest Service.
To talk about bringing the databases on wild
berries, shed antlers, wild mushrooms, firewood
harvesting, medicinal plants, wild rices.
In other words, anything, anything that you
might go out and be interested in harvesting.
So you don't have to be a hunter to be a part
of what we're doing.
You might be a foreign, uh, mushroom gatherer
and, uh, and a mountain hiker, but you know,
anybody who was into the harvesting of natural and
wild foods, we want them to be a part of this.
And we intend to export this around the world
to remind modern society that we are still
ultimately dependent on nature for our
survival and for our food and for our health.
And maybe to force governments in countries
like Canada and the United States to do a
better job of managing land for the production
of those kinds of things that people want.
Instead of making decisions only on
the basis of profits.
Or emotion.
Yes.
And I, you know, I, I really like the
concept of piggybacking on a trend that's
already occurring rather than trying
to fight the current.
Because, you know, I'm looking through
the list of things in different questions
and you're, you're pegging off a bunch
of the ones that I'd like to ask you about.
But, you know, hunters have always been
beating that drum.
Hunters are conservationists and
they support conservation through the purchase
of their licenses and tags and the, the
North American model of conservation last
hundred, 120 years of, of that has been highly,
highly supported by, by the hunting community.
Whether they understand conservation or not,
being able to bridge that, from the hunting
community to the, the non-hunting community,
I, I think it's absolutely brilliant.
You listed a bunch of different organizations
and these organizations are massive that
are involved with the initiative.
How can an individual who is interested in
conservation, who's listening to this and
says, you know what?
You raised some really good points, I want
to learn more, I want to be involved.
How can an individual be involved with this?
Well, we, we, we do have individuals involved,
but it's, but it's also important to be
upfront and honest.
I mean, to be a partner in the Wild Harvest
Initiative, there has to be some sort of
financial commitment.
Now, those financial commitments
vary, obviously.
You know, you don't, you don't have the same
financial commitment from you know, a Bass Pro,
as you may have from an individual outfitter,
you know, it can't be.
But what everybody who is a part of the Wild
Harvest Initiative knows is that everybody
who has become a partner has contributed
something to make it, the collective work.
So I have lots of people who come and say,
Hey, Shane, you know, we'd like to have our
logo associated with your, uh, with your
partnership and I say, that'd be really great.
You know, I understand that and I know why you
would want that because when we put out our
brochures now and we set up our big displays of
conventions, and then we show some of the, the
powerful, influential people who are on our
side, I know it would be good for you to
have your logo there, but I have to think
about all the people who are there and every
one of them made some kind of contribution.
And so that is one way.
If you want to be part of the alliance or the
actual team in Wild Harvest Initiative,
you have to come with the intention of
supporting it some way.
Now, supporting it in some way, that way, of
course that's clear.
That's the way it has to be.
There was the promise that was made to the
partners, the state governments, and everyone
else, that people who were inside the loop who
have access directly, who get to call Shane and ask
questions of the website and their area and all
those kinds of services.
There are on the inside.
But that doesn't mean that people on the
outside who may want to know more about it
um, who may not want to give money or may not
have any money that they can give or whatever.
They can still help this initiative by talking
about, you know, by, by, by joining our
mailing list by, by sending us their email
contact information so they can be getting
the information that's coming out and then
they can share it with their friends.
Look, we are determined to establish a new
movement in society.
This is not a project.
This is an unrelenting activity to create
a new movement in society that's made up
of, you know, elderly people who get out
there in the forest and love to just go with
their grandchildren picking blueberries.
It's meant for the, for the, you know, the mad
fitness hunter who wants to, you know, run up
and down the mountain 50 times before he even
looks for an animal.
You know, it's meant for the, for the
float fishermen who's going down there.
It's meant for the people who like to seek
out their firewood and gather it up and chop,
chop it up and bring it home and enjoy putting
it on their own fire.
It's for the artists who would like to collect
shed antlers and create, you know, jewelry.
It is for the people who collect, uh, burrs
out of trees to, to do sculptures or wooden
bowls or it's for people who, who, who from
indigenous communities and others understand
the dissonant plants and want to harvest those.
It's for everyone.
And if you add up everyone in our
society, who does some of that, everyone
forty-five million hunters and anglers.
Well, how many berry pickers do we have?
How many hikers do we have?
Who simply harvest beauty?
Yes.
That's a harvest from nature.
We're going to be including that
in our database.
You know what, because if you go out for any
activity in nature, harvesting berries,
fishing, hunting, chopping firewood,
collecting wild flowers, collecting
wild honey, maple syrup.
There's so many things, no matter what
you're out there for.
When you come back and tell your stories, and
everybody tells stories, you can't shut people out
there got to tell their stories about nature.
That's the amazing thing.
When they come back to share those stories,
most of what they talk about is not so
much the berries they got or the animal
they got or whatever.
It's the experience they had, the things they
saw, the sunset, the river, the shadows of
the moon on the water.
They, the, the, the wild flowers blowing in
the wind, whatever it is, most of what they
talk about is beauty.
But the thing is, they wouldn't have
ever harvested that beauty, except they
went out into nature.
And for many of them, they had a primary
motivation that day to go to nature.
Very big, to get their firewood, to hunt, to
fish, you know, they had some motivation that
particular day to go.
I want all of those people talking to one
another and I want all of those people talking to
politicians and telling politicians, this is
what we want done with our wildlife, our land.
And I want to bring the indigenous
and non-indigenous communities
together because food unites us all.
I couldn't agree more.
Oftentimes you hear from people, what can I do?
I'm just one person.
Well, for the listeners, if you'd like to see what
one person can do, with the help of a large team
of others behind him, checkout Shane Mahoney's
website, Conservation Visions, check out the
Wild Harvest Initiative because when you're
talking about how to get involved, the boots on
the ground, networking, that one person is
capable of doing.
They throw up something on their Instagram feed
or they do a Tik Tok or they just raised basic
awareness about what it is that they enjoy out
in nature and the value in preserving that.
And by forwarding the Wild Harvest Initiative
information with that, they'll have
some tangible metrics that they can be used
to measure what that valuable resource is.
I think, I really like what you're doing.
We are very fragmented and there is a
lot of infighting.
My side's better than your side, or if what
you're doing is wrong and it sure sounds
like you've got the secret sauce here.
If people are willing to participate, for
people to work together for our own, everyone's
shared interest.
We do, we do have the secret sauce.
I can tell you this right now.
I spent, I spent 25 years promoting the
North American model and as part of my efforts
and certainly others.
People today would not even know there was a
North American model if those activities
had not taken place.
I know that for a fact.
Well, I'm telling you this idea is even bigger
because this idea could bring together people
who are never going to be really interested in
the North American model of hunting, but they're
interested in wild food.
And the other thing about this is that.
There's absolutely no limitation on
background or age or ethnicity or racial,
uh, uh, background or anything of this nature.
Because when you look at all of the products
in nature, from beauty to wild plants, to
medicinal plants, to mushrooms, to, you know,
wood, all the products.
Everybody, to some extent, wants
some of that.
We have 40 to 45 million people in Canada, in the
United States, as I said, who every year, legally
fish and hunt and who consume what they, what
they harvest, not all of it, but a lot of it.
We are currently running surveys, uh,
scientific surveys.
Uh, we've run one in Texas as a prototype
and we are now going to be running surveys in
Wyoming, Nevada, Arizona and Alaska, where we
are asking for the first time, asking hunters,
starting with hunters, we'll move on to anglers,
asking them how much of the meat they harvest
do they share and who do they share it with?
So let's say in Canada and the United States,
in terms of hunters, we have 12 million, five,
let's say let's just make it very conservative
estimate, say we have 15 million, let's just say
15 million hunters in the United States and Canada.
We actually have more than that.
But let's say that that's about what we have.
Our A priority, in other words ahead of
time, hypothesis is that each of those hunters
probably shares that meat that they harvest with
at least four people.
And we based that cautiously on a
household, so it leads to the wife and maybe
the two children.
But our initial survey in the state of Texas
indicates in fact that the average hunter maybe
sharing his meat or her meat with between 10
and 12 million people, the 10 and 12 people.
So now you start to multiply 15 million
people by 10 or 12 million people.
Now all of a sudden the group of people who's
actually consuming that wild meat.
I'm not saying they're dependent on it, I'm
not being meretricious or air at all.
I'm not saying they depend on, I say, they're
just having a burger or they're coming over for
a nice meal, or they're getting a roast of moose
or, you know, a pot of chili or whatever it
might be, but they are consuming that food.
All of a sudden the political dynamic here,
it goes from 15 million people to 150 billion,
because if that 150 million people did
not think that hunting was in some sense
acceptable, they wouldn't be eating the meat
that you would provide for killing an animal.
And we are going to do exactly the
same with fish.
And we believe that the 40 to 45 million people
who hunt and fish in Canada and the United
States share that food with probably something
like 250 to 300 million people out of the 360
million people that exist in our two countries.
Holy crow.
Now, if you're a political scientist,
you're a social demographer, you're
an economist.
Those kinds of numbers, all of a sudden start
to mean a lot different to you in your research,
in your thinking, in your writing, in your
lobbying, et cetera.
So I don't want to be going back to
legislatures, arguing for just hunters anymore.
I want to be going to back with a group of
people behind me, all of whom want to share
in the benefits of nature, who are going
to the legislatures and telling our
elected officials, ie.
the ones who gave them their jobs.
I want us to be going there as a group of
people that wide, and that diverse and
telling them we want the right policies
for land management and conservation
in our countries.
And I don't want them split along liberal,
conservative NDP, Democrat, Republican
lines, because there's going to be too many
different kinds of us in this group.
We don't care who's in power, we want you
to do the right thing.
That is what I'm striving for.
That's what the Wild Harvest
Initiative is about.
That is absolutely phenomenal.
Shane, before we wrap things up, is there
anything else we should be talking about?
Is there anything you'd like to get out?
Well, I'm just grateful that we've had this
opportunity and I would like to listen to, I
would like to say that if there are others out
there who had their own venues, if there are
media people who have talk shows or, you know,
shows on radio, for example, if there are
other podcasts colleagues that are out there who
are interested in this.
Please get in touch because part of what
we are striving to do is to get the word out
to as many people as possible, obviously.
Um, and also encourage any of the people who
listen to this podcast, as an individual or as
a member of a group.
You may be a member of the Audubon Society.
You may be a member of Backcountry
Hunters and Anglers.
You may be a member of the BC Wildlife
Federation, you may be a member of GOA BC.
You may, you know, maybe all kinds of
organizations, Ducks Unlimited, whatever.
Try to convince your organization to become
a part of what we were doing because
we are growing.
We have at the database, we now have these
surveys being conducted in these States.
We're way down the road on this thing.
And now we're in major discussions with
people about Africa.
This is amazing.
It has lept already, you know, uh, around
the world where people have been hearing about
this and if individuals and or their entities
want to learn more about it, go to our website.
We also have a Wild Harvest Initiative
website, specifically.
We're looking for feedback on that site,
but please consider becoming a partner.
The individual can become a partner
at a small level.
Obviously, if you come from a big organization,
like Four Trucks, we, we, we, we look for you
to, to, to, to make a larger contribution.
There are all kinds of businesses.
I assume your podcast is primarily listened
to in British Columbia.
Is that correct?
Is that a fair assessment?
Primarily Canada.
Yeah.
Primarily Canada based.
So wider than British Columbia, so across, um,
you know, uh, I'd like for maybe an even in
future podcasts, you can start to bring this up
and encourage people to get in touch with us, to
actually become members, uh, Travis, you know, to
actually ask them to, to, to reach out and help us.
Uh, there are lots of organizations that could
provide financial support to make this work.
There's lots of individuals who
can do that.
And there's lots of individuals, even if they
can't provide financial support, can talk about
this, can tweet it out.
Can, can, can put it on their Facebook site.
Can, you know, look at the videos that we
produce and pass them on to their friends
and so on and so forth.
And believe me, when we throw things out today,
we get a lot of reach.
We hit a million, a million and a half,
2 million people when we throw things out.
So, um, this is, uh, this is a big idea.
It's an inclusive idea.
It's about things we really feel important
about our health, the health of our
environment and the health of our food.
Why would you not get behind this?
Shane, thank you very much for being on The
Silvercore Podcast.
I've really enjoyed speaking with you.
Thank you very much.