Hunters and Fishers love the land and the Wildlife & Marine Resources
Strong supporters of marine, land and wildlife conservation, hunters and fishers in the US are in decline. How will we get a new generation to take to the field?
The great irony is that many SPECIES MIGHT NOT SURVIVE AT ALL WERE IT NOT FOR HUNTERS AND FISHERS trying to kill them. Our nation’s 15 million hunters and 30 Million fishers have become essential partners for wildlife and Marine management. Hunters have paid more than 700 million dollars for duck stamps, which have added 5.2 million acres to the National Wildlife Refuge System since 1934 when the first stamps were issued. They pay approximately $614million annually for license tags and permits each year, which help finance state game and fish agencies. Thirty million fishermen pay approximately $491 million annually for licenses and stamps. They contribute more than $250 million dollars annually in excise taxes on guns, ammunition, and other equipment, which largely pays for new public wildlife habitat lands and state agency wildlife and fisheries management. Hunters in the private sector also play a growing role in conserving wildlife. Hunters give 280 million dollars annually to organizations such as NWTF, Pheasants Forever, The Ruffed Grouse Society, RMEF, DU, Quail Unlimited, CCA and other non-profit groups which sponsor species specific initiatives and maintain important habitat as well as carrying out permanent land protection. This incredible process is known in some circles as the North American model of Wildlife and Marine Resources management model. It is unique and exists no where else in the world in an organized fashion that even comes close. In many countries of the world where wildlife is “protected”, many species are in danger as a result of poaching and lack of funding to support sound scientific wildlife and fisheries management.
Many scientists speculate that humans are still programmed for the chase, since our species has been doing that for longer than we have been farming, writing poetry, or telemarketing to my home phone at dinnertime.
Hunter gatherers now go to Food Lion or other similar markets to purchase the meat, fish protein, fruits, vegetables and other food stuffs that our ancestors grew or hunted and killed, or did without. They are far removed enough so that they allow others to do their killing for them and in many cases socially protest the process but never-the-less they participate in the socio-economic process.
Then there is the vegan community of intellectual elitists who use emotion and conjecture to rally people to protest against that system. Groups like the Humane Society of The United States who masquerades as an animal welfare organization while fleecing little old blue haired ladies out of $20 bucks at a crack, while pretending to be helping pets. Their real agenda is to tell you what to eat, what to think and what is good for you and when. And they want to stop you from hunting or fishing!
We hope that our program can help make a difference and help recruit new participants to the hunting and fishing sports. Hopefully we will be making a loud statement that these pursuits are good and important and need to be preserved for now and for future generations. It is surely an irony that wildlife needs the hunters nearly as bad as they need the habitat to live in. Without the recreational sport hunter and the recreational sport fisher our wildlife and marine resources will begin to undergo a change that will lead to privatization. One only need go to Europe to see what impact privatization has on wildlife and fisheries. In Europe only the very wealthy and the titled privileged few have access to hunting, fishing or even observing wildlife outside of a zoo. Much work needs to be done and the task seems daunting. I think that the only way to accomplish the goal is the same way that you eat an elephant, one bite at a time.