Conservation Visions

Conservation Visions is a private social enterprise founded by internationally recognized conservationist and wildlife advocate, Shane Patrick Mahoney. The company focuses on providing a broad scope of comprehensive services to stakeholders within the domestic and international conservation communities. Partners include industry leaders and governments at the state/provincial and federal levels, as well as a variety of institutions and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Services range from scientific research and consultation to policy development and strategic review to media production and public communications. Fusing science, collaborative management, and a passionate concern for nature with emotive speaking, writing, and filmmaking, Conservation Visions works closely with clients to brainstorm new ideas, establish priorities and identify goals, facilitate coalitions, and advance conservation and the idea of stewardship in the 21st century. One natural world, one humanity, one chance… Conservation Matters®.

Conservation Visions educates and inspires the public and sustainable use community on why conservation matters; re-establish conservation as a social movement by promoting the concept of “citizen conservation;” builds strong and diverse conservation coalitions by building upon shared ideals; encourage and enable stakeholders to take action for wildlife and human heritage protection; reinvigorate the idea that wildlife belongs to everyone, and ultimately effect positive change for wildlife and humanity.

Conservation Visions Inc. is governed by both a moral obligation and ethical purpose to speak for the wild diversity of the planet and to defend and support the cultural diversity of humanity. The corporation’s worldview embraces all effective approaches to conservation that are confirmed by science and experiential knowledge, and that recognizes man as an integral part of the natural world. Conservation Visions Inc. believes the conservation of nature is a core responsibility of citizenship and that mankind shares a stewardship obligation to all living things.

Conservation Visions’ Wild Harvest Initiative® is the first-ever attempt to synthesize and evaluate the combined economic, conservation and social benefits of recreational wild animal harvests in American and Canadian societies. Its innovative approach will help change conversations and provide new insights concerning the relevance of such natural harvests in modern North American society. By exploring the sustainable use of wildlife in the wider social contexts of food security, rural economies, human health, fitness, and nutrition, as well as wildlife habitat and environmental management, the Initiative will deliver a reasoned and mature discussion of wildlife use to the wider public, working within emerging social concerns for food quality and the mounting evidence of the importance of nature experiences to human well-being. In doing so it will demonstrate the natural alliance between hunting and angling and prominent social trends, including the locavore movement, organic eating, homesteading, and “green-living,” further amplifying the relevance of recreational wildlife harvests to the broadest possible audience – one that includes youth, women, minorities and, certainly, non-hunters and anglers.

In reframing the debate about the modern relevance of recreational hunting and angling, the Initiative will positively align these activities with other natural resource use traditions such as berry-picking, wild fruit gathering, wild mushroom harvesting, beekeeping, and firewood gathering. These activities are commonly practiced by large numbers of citizens and are well-accepted as appropriate uses of nature’s products. Through its communication efforts, the Wild Harvest Initiative will represent hunting and angling as philosophically consistent with these accepted practices, forecasting powerful social connections of mutual support. By conjoining these insights with existing economic assessments of recreational hunting and angling, and by evaluating in detail the environmental costs and mechanisms that would be necessary to replace this wild food harvest, the Wild Harvest Initiative will help focus a fundamental question for conservation policy institutions; namely, if hunting and angling were to cease tomorrow, what would be the economic, social and conservation consequences?

The reach of the Wild Harvest Initiative® is already reflected in its diverse and expanding alliance that includes state governments, the outdoor industry, conservation NGOs and individuals. There can be no doubt of its potential to contribute to a normalizing of hunting and angling, to a renewed and escalated evaluation of wildlife’s value to modern society and to encouraging hunter and angler recruitment, retention and reactivation. 

Learn more about Conservation Visions here: www.conservationvisions.com