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In 1992, Tom Heberlein, a rural sociologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, made a bold prediction: If sociological trends, like increasing urbanization, smaller family sizes and growing anti-hunting sentiment continued, the sport of hunting – as Wisconsinites knew it – could be extinct by the year 2050.A quarter century later, Keith Warnke, the hunting and shooting sports coordinator for the state of Wisconsin, sits at his desk in downtown Madison looking at a graph of recent hunter data. "It's just striking how close demographers were in their estimates to the actual hunter numbers," he says. Warnke is a "recovering biologist," as he puts it, so he collects hunter data and demographics – age, gender, location, etc. – with the same detailed focus that he used to apply to tracking deer populations. Only now, he uses unique identification numbers instead of ear tags.
When put on a timeline, that cohort of older hunters looks like a wave, moving through time, that drops as it hits the age of 65."What that means is the way that conservation was done in the past is not going to be sufficient in the future," says Randy Stark, the former chief game warden for Wisconsin's Department of Natural Resources, or DNR. LINKING HUNTING TO CONSERVATION To understand the connection between hunting and conservation, you need to go back to when deer and geese weren't viewed a public nuisance, but as the rare wildlife they were. In the late 1800s, American wildlife was in a bad place. Market hunting, trapping, invasive species and American's rapid expansion westward had pushed many wildlife species to the brink. All of this over-hunting got the attention of a couple of other hunters – one who would go on to found the Audubon Society, another who would become the 26th and youngest president of the United States. George Bird Grinnell and Theodore Roosevelt, along with others like John Muir and Gifford Pinchot, helped establish the American conservation movement around the idea that wildlife and other natural resources, belong to all Americans – current and future. As such, they needed to be preserved or conserved.
That act, Rissman says, was galvanized not just by hunters, but by affluent women's groups that had grown concerned about the millinery trade's impact on bird populations. Feathered hats were in fashion in the late 19th century and hunters were killing millions of birds annually, wiping out entire colonies, to feed the demand. Sport hunters, angry about the sorry state of their quarry, were equally concerned. Together, they helped push lawmakers to a legislative solution.A similar collaborative effort is needed to address the funding issues of today, Rissman says, and she believes that other wildlife lovers are willing to contribute. About 20 miles north of Madison, at a quiet, open wildlife sanctuary, Neal Deunk takes pictures of four lonely geese floating on a tiny patch of open water in an otherwise frozen pond. His telephoto lens juts out from the open driver's side window of his car. Deunk knows the challenges facing wildlife refuges like this, with the decline in hunting and shrinking revenues. He says he'd like to see lawmakers allocate more general tax money to address the situation. But he also thinks it would be prudent to get other wildlife enthusiasts to contribute more. "It's difficult to license birdwatchers or hikers and so forth in the same way that hunting and fishing can be regulated," he says, watching as a few of the geese take flight. Asked if he'd be willing to pay a license-fee to view wildlife like this, he pauses. "I think I would," he says. Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit npr.org
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