“Because if people made their own choices about everything, “
He wasn’t referring to ‘eveything’.
He wasn’t. I was. Context is everything.
The point is that we wouldn’t have the few areas that exist now in a somewhat natural state if “everyone made their own choices”, especially in the past.
Mining concerns would have stripped the land of everything of value - any suitable animal that moved would have been killed for hides and meat. Fish, birds, everything that could have provided a meal or a buck - it happened nearly everywhere else.
One of the worst things to happen to the conservation movement in this country was the coopting of the publicity and messaging by the left, and the radicalization of long-existing organizations. Their political sabotages have polluted the actual invaluable work done to preserve at least a small number of places were people can glimpse a bit of the glory of God’s creation.
Ol’ Dean Weingarten does a great disservice to a balanced view of wildlife and it’s conservation. Perhaps the ease of generating a consistent flow of bear-based fear porn for gun nuts is too lucrative to leave on the table.