I'm guessing that deer hunters are getting their equipment ready for Saturday morning, and the rest of us are getting out our blaze orange garb for the next ten days.
Do hunters and non-hunters have much in common? An article in the fall edition of Wisconsin Natural Resources, published by the DNR, says we do. In "Let's Talk Hunting," the author says that hunters and non-hunters must put aside differences, and communicate better with one another, for the sake of conservation in the state.
The article says that Wisconsin hunters pay for a "good chunk" of wildlife conservation in the state, through their license fees and equipment purchases. The principle behind this, from the time of Theodore Roosevelt and Aldo Leopold, is that "wildlife belongs to the public, and that management of game species is funded by users, specifically hunters and anglers."
The problem addressed in the article is that the numbers of hunters in the state have been shrinking. In the decade since 2000, hunters have declined 50,000, to a total of 550,000. They predict that by 2030, hunting licenses will have declined to 400,000, a drop of more than 25%.
The author tells that this amounts to a loss of over $4 million in revenue to the state's fish and wildlife fund each year. That fund is what pays for "game management and conservation enforcement, as well as ecosystem restoration and management."
Any solutions? Keith Warnke with DNR's Bureau of Law Enforcement says, "There is a disconnect between some environmentalists and some hunters and anglers, and how we bridge that divide depends on both sides putting differences aside, opening a dialogue, and working together to solve it."
I don't know enough about this topic to hold a valid opinion. But, I thought the article was interesting, as I had never thought much about the connection between hunting dollars and conservation.
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