Billions of people across the globe depend on nutrition and livelihood from harvested wild meat, fish and other natural products.
But changing ecological conditions, public values and food systems are raising broad and challenging questions about what wild harvest means today and what role it should play in the future of conservation.
“How do we maintain wild harvests in the way that has the greatest benefit to biodiversity and to human communities?” said TWS member and Fellow Shane Mahoney, CEO of Conservation Visions, Inc., a private conservation research and policy guidance company.
To answer this question and others, Conservation Visions, in cooperation with its U.K.-based partner, Jamma Conservation and Communities, is co-hosting a special symposium on Nov. 4 at TWS’ Annual Conference in Des Moines, Iowa. The program takes a broad view of wild harvest—including hunting, fishing, gathering and related cultural practices—and the enduring relationships among wildlife, food, people and conservation.
The symposium, “Wild Harvest in a Changing World: Food, Value, and the Future of Sustainable Use,” will feature 12 expert speakers from around the world. “You’re looking at people who really have made a mark on the conservation space,” Mahoney said. “It really is quite a powerhouse.”
Speakers will include Craig Bruce, director of Jamma Conservation and Communities; Roel Lopez, professor and director of Texas A&M University’s Natural Resources Institute; John Organ, retired chief of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program; Tom Decker, retired communications manager at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; Amanda Wuestefeld, director of the Division of Fish, Wildlife and Natural Resources at the Indiana Department of Natural Resources; Tony Wasley, president and CEO of the Wildlife Management Institute; Arno Wimpffen, the director-general of the International Council for Game and Wildlife Conservation; and Josh Milspaugh, Camp Fire Conservation Fund Chair at the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry and professor and director of the Boone and Crockett Program at the University of Montana.
These speakers and others will tackle the history and relevance of wild harvest in the global conservation movement; its importance to human health and well-being, food and community; and the policy, research and investment questions that will shape its future. The symposium builds on the broader work of Conservation Visions’ Wild Harvest Initiative® and its partnership alliance, which is bringing much greater attention to the scale, relevance and largely unrecognized contributions of wild food systems in North America and around the world.
Several talks will test assumptions that have long shaped wildlife conservation. One will ask whether tightly controlled markets for wild meat could help expand the public value of such harvests without putting wildlife or public trust at risk. Others will push the discussion in different directions—using One Health to connect wild food with human, wildlife and ecosystem health. Topics will also approach Indigenous perspectives to explore access, food sovereignty and stewardship.
From the state agency perspective, Wuestefeld will consider how harvested wildlife can be understood not only as a management outcome, but also as a source of public food. “What we should be talking about today are highly controlled, highly managed markets that move that protein to public need,” she said.
Mahoney will close by placing the day’s debates within Full-Spectrum Conservation, a new framework that seeks to unite diverse conservation perspectives and considers recreational harvests as a central expression of sustainable use rather than a marginal recreational activity. “Our hope, given the diversity of these presentations and the importance of these questions, is that there will be really broad participation with the audience,” he said.
The symposium will run from 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Central on Nov. 4 at The Wildlife Society’s Annual Conference in Des Moines, Iowa.
