Biologist moving to bigger stage as DSC executive director

Published 3:09 pm Saturday, August 26, 2017

Corey Mason and his family just returned from Australia, where he took a water buffalo. Call it a dress rehearsal for his new title as executive director of the Dallas Safari Club.

For the past 16 years, Mason has worked as a wildlife biologist for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. His most recent post was in Tyler as regional biologist over the Pineywoods and Post Oak Savannah regions of the state. But his career has taken him around Texas, where he has worked on wildlife management areas – as a district biologist and the department’s dove program leader.

Mason now is stepping onto a global stage where the focus covers the gamut from hunting and conservation in Texas, North America and the world. Going forward, he is more likely to be involved with lions, tigers, bears, international hunters, domestic hunters, Congress, foreign governments and elephant and rhinoceros poaching than bobwhite quail and white-tailed deer.

With more than 6,000 members worldwide, Dallas Safari Club easily ranks among the top five conservation organizations anywhere, and it could be argued it trails only Safari Club International in influence in conservation and hunting matters.

“Dallas Safari Club is a Dallas-based conservation organization with an international presence. Their mission has three tenants – conservation, education and hunter advocacy, with a really strong thought based on science delivered or science-based policy,” Mason said.

That should make DSC and Mason a good match.

“I am a passionate hunter, hunted my entire life and was raised doing it and will always be an active hunter. On the other side, I am also a certified wildlife biologist, so I think I bring a unique skill set of a practicing hunter and the understanding really of that intersection of hunting and science and policy and all of that. My desire is very clearly focused that conservation moving forward is based on good sound science, recognizing that policy clearly shapes that as well and the hunting advocacy side of it. Being unapologetically strong in the need for hunting rights,” Mason said

He explained science-based policy along with regulated hunting and the dollars that come from it is what helps put conservation on the ground, whether in North America or around the world.

Mason said the education component is important to keep hunters in the field because it is hunter dollars that ultimately fund conservation. Hunter advocacy keeps hunting possible.

While that has not been an issue recently in the United States, there are countries in Africa that have closed their borders to hunting. There are attacks on hunting in other forms such as airlines refusing to transport hunter trophies.

Mason said DSC is currently gearing up to tell the story of hunters’ importance to conservation. It is something even hunters may not understand fully.

“There is a need to have a proactive message to make sure the message out there is true and factual, based on science and facts rather than purely based on emotion that is someone’s individual thoughts,” he said.

That story is that without value wildlife can cease to exist. With value wildlife thrives. That is the case in Texas, where deer lease revenue allows landowners to reduce domestic livestock to preserve habitat.

The negative side is happening in African nations that have been closed to hunting. Locals who had worked with and benefitted from hunting operations have had to find other ways to feed families. Some become farmers or raise cattle, but that does not co-exist well with lions and leopards feeding on their livestock and elephants trampling their crops, so the wild animals have to go. Others turn to poaching to feed their family and make money.

“If the hunters’ dollars are not there to keep the animals present and there, (the animals) will be replaced by something. It will be replaced by a sugar cane farm or cattle or a strip mine. But something has to have a value to be there and those hunter dollars provide the value for those species to be there,” Mason said.

A prime example is the alarming rate elephants, rhinoceros and other game are being poached in Africa. In countries where sustainable hunting is allowed, there is more money for anti-poaching units. Hunter dollars and the jobs they provide have a much larger impact than other so-called conservation causes.

“That has been proven time and time again. Without the hunter’s dollars, the perceived value is nice, but the real value is what really matters. If there are not dollars coming in, in the sense of providing local jobs and in the sense of tracker and anti-poaching units and the development of water and the sustainability of hundreds of thousands or millions of acres of forest intact for those species, which hunters dollars do, no one else’s dollars do. They are simply not there. Hunters’ dollars are absolutely a requisite to protect those species,” Mason said.

He added it is easier setting the tone of the conversation rather than having to react to anti-hunting attacks, especially ones based on emotion. Mason also noted that money spent by hunters for game animals is highly beneficial to non-game species.

DSC is probably best known for its annual convention that draws a 100,000-plus each winter. It is a show where hunters go to book hunts for the coming year or into the future and others get maybe their only chance to shoulder a $200,000 shotgun, shop for more practical hunting gear or just look at the trophies on display.

That show helps the organization raise the millions of dollars it donates annually.

In Texas, DSC supports programs like outdoor education courses in high schools, underwriting Hunters for the Hungry donations in some locations and the restoration of bighorn sheep in the Trans Pecos.

In recent years, DSC has also had to take political stances on more than one occasion on behalf of hunters. Mason expects that to continue both here and abroad.

In leaving TPWD, Mason said there have been a lot of highlights. Two that stand out are watching a hunter take their first animal on a public hunt and working with landowners.

“When you are invited as a Parks and Wildlife representative to come and provide recommendations to a landowner, it is a tremendous privilege for someone to provide access to their property to you like that,” he said.

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