By Jason Daley, Sierra

Hunting in the United States and Canada is very different than in other parts of the world. Over the last 150 years, the hunting community and managers have developed a system called the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. In short, in other places, like Europe, wild game is considered the property of private landowners. In North America, things are more democratic—wildlife is considered a public trust, one that needs to be managed as a sustainable public resource for the benefit of everyone. And to make sure that happens, the model dictates that decisions for how to keep herds of elk, deer, bear, and other animals healthy be based on the best available science. 

But in a new paper in the journal Science Advances, researcher Kyle Artelle, formerly of Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, and his colleagues take a look at whether hunt management systems in the United States and Canada hew to some basic scientific standards. What they found is that a majority fail to meet the four hallmarks they map out, which they say act as a litmus test for science-based claims. 

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