9th International Deer Biology Congress

AUTHORS: John F. Organ, U.S. Geological Survey, Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit Program, Reston, VA; Shawn J Riley, Department of Fisheries and Wild, Michigan State University; Göran Ericsson, Department of Wild, Fish, and Environmental Studies, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden; Amber D. Goguen, Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Michigan State University; Shane Mahoney, Conservation Visions, Canada

ABSTRACT: Wildlife governance, the totality of processes used in governing, whether undertaken by a government, market or social network used to guide human activities involving wildlife resources, takes various forms across the planet.  One aspect of wildlife governance – the laws, policies and regulation affecting the exchange of wild-harvested deer meat (venison) – reflects broad differences in governance models across the planet.  Hunting for deer throughout the world, and the yield of wild-harvested venison, has provided ecosystem goods and services for millennia.  Yet, these goods and services are in many cases unrecognized, unquantified, or largely ignored.  To set the context for the special session on wild-harvested venison, we will review recent evidence from Europe and North America that suggests venison is a coupler of humans to nature across cultures and lifestyles, urban and rural.  We’ll review and compare the extent of venison sharing and consumption, and the effects of this immense biomass of legal, wild-harvested venison on societal connections to hunters, hunting, and nature.  We provide an overview of formal commercial markets and informal non-commercial vehicles for sharing venison derived from legally-hunted deer, and explore differences in governance systems and their effect on how venison moves through society, hunters’ sharing of wild-harvested venison, and potential implications to conservation.  Finally, we provide a framework for considering wild-harvested venison as a coupler of humans and nature.