The stories arrived from two very different sourcesneither remotely connected to an outdoor publication or hunting enterprise. That each delivers essentially the same message makes the content worth considering for everyone who cares about hunting and the preservation of wild places.
Perhaps the most surprising, maybe even shocking, commentary can be found in the November issue of National Geographic, arguably the most respected and widely distributed publication on the planet. The title of the feature article sets the tone for what might be an unprecedented observation by a magazine whose tenor typically runs toward preservation: “Hunters for the Love of the Land.”
The story details the ways hunters form a vital force in conservation.
“The great irony is that many species would not survive at all were it not for the hunters trying to kill them,” wrote author Robert M. Poole.
The article reveals that hunters have spent more than $700 million for the duck stamps that added 5.2 million acres to the National Wildlife Refuge system. Far greater sums go to the state wildlife agencies that manage and protect a wide variety of birds and animals.
Hunter-based conservation organizations such as Ducks Unlimited and Pheasants Forever spend additional millions for habitat protection.
The point the publication correctly chooses to make is that with a continuing decline in hunting participation, populations of game birds and animals are likely to suffer, along with the wild places that harbor thousands of other wildlife species.
Poole describes the changing forces that have delivered humans from Neolithic hunter-gatherers to computer geeks, along with the inexorable march from rural to urban living.
“Human population grows. Habitat shrinks.”
With these shifts comes the recorded decline in hunting participation. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service statistics reveal just 12.5 million hunters in 2006, more than 1.5 million fewer than in 1991. Overall, the number of hunters and anglers declined from 37.8 million in 2001 to 33.9 million in 2006. The Rocky Mountain region experienced one of the most dramatic declines.
It is this statistic that gave rise to our second article, this in September from The Associated Press. It recites these same losses of hunting participation, but suggests yet another wrinkle. There’s a growing perception among many hunters and their families that they can’t afford the time and expense the sport entails.
All of which brings us to an anonymous, and angry, phone message from a few days ago.
Voice straining with emotion, the man said he was a Colorado native frustrated with a perceived lack of access and opportunity.
“There’s no place to go. Unless you have money, you’re out in the cold. It’s gone from bad to worse, and the average hunter in this state is done for,” he said. The man said he was hanging up his rod and gun, thereby becoming another statistic for the AP story and a tragic loss in the scenario of the hunter as wildlife protector as outlined in the National Geographic piece.
Statistics we understand. What can be done to change them is quite another matter.
Charlie Meyers: 303-954-1609 or cmeyers@denverpost.com
