Overall the number of hunters in the US is in decline. There is a magic age where people have enough income and spare time that they can buy a small game, deer, bear, elk, fishing, and maybe a couple more licenses in adjoining states. That age is when a hunter contributes the most to funding state wildlife agencies, and here is the rub.
That age, that peak buying year, is getting one year older every year. Studies show the same thing, in all states. Right now that number is precipitously in the late 50s.
Ok, here’s another statistic. After a certain age people stop buying so many licenses. Chasing after hounds is a young man's’ sport. Likewise backpack hunting sheep. Elk hunters typically cover a lot of ground every day and pack out huge heavy loads. The age when people start to not buy licenses begins in the 60s, by the mid 70s many stop hunting.
When the peak buying year meets up with the age that people stop buying licenses we are going to see a lot more of a drop off in licenses than we are currently experiencing, and there is no place to make up those conservation dollars.
Some states are increasing license costs, but too big an increase and people stop buying the licenses that they might not use. States also look to lottery revenue or special license plates, or a check off box on your taxes to donate. And then there are the Pittman Robertson funds from a tax on guns and ammo. Of course all of those sources are usually limited to being spent on habitat, or education, or whatever. The salaries of actual fish cops, the men and women with the power of arrest, the ones with a glock and a pickup, those usually come out of license sales, likewise all those trucks and radios and offices. Fish cops do double duty as biologists, botanists, accountants, public relations people, and father confessor.
And then there are the certified biologists. After fish and game officers, biologists are crucial to state wildlife agencies. Oh, there can be grant funding that helps for specific studies, but often a lot of that work is contracted out to universities. Life long employed biologists are the backbone of fish and wildlife agencies. They too need salaries.
In our state we manage some 300 species, that’s a lot of critters that aren’t “game”. In some units every single officer is out responding to nuisance bear calls some days. That’s not hunting.
A panel on sustaining America's fish and wildlife resources recently warned: "Without a change in the way we finance fish and wildlife conservation, we can expect the list of federally threatened and endangered species to grow from nearly 1,600 species today to perhaps thousands more in the future."
www.npr.org/…
In my state the budget for fish and game is about 130 million. Without hunters and anglers, especially out of state hunters laying down $550 for an elk tag, we’d lose ¾ of that money. There are also hundreds of volunteers.
We are supposed to report any game violations, even if we ourselves are the violators. It happens. We suddenly realize that the watershed we killed the animal in is actually the next unit over, we mistake a spike for a cow, things happen. We also report poachers. In just about every case poachers are apprehended on a tip from a hunter. And then there are the endangered species harvesters for export, or bear gall bladder harvesters, or deer in velvet, or common every day industrial polluters on the sly out in the middle of nowhere.
Hunters and trappers are often the cheapest and earliest indicators of trends in species populations. Biologists commonly conduct harvest surveys and bi catch notification as well as reports of sightings or tracks. Every square mile of public land is walked and observed yearly by some hunter, every obscure draw and box canyon. Of course this is if the well meaning but uninformed haven’t outlawed trapping as they’ve done where I live.
Nationally, 74 percent of Americans believe the country should "do whatever it takes to protect the environment," according to the Pew Research Center.
But in most cases outside of hunting and fishing, that's not being translated into dollars.
There was a movement to tax outdoor gear the same way we do hunting and shooting gear. I’ve no idea how huge that money would be, enough to make all Parks free maybe, and camping, and forest management which we no longer do, and god knows what else. In response manufacturers banded together and formed the Outdoor Industry Association. Yup, REI and Dicks of recent fame. Patagonia and North Face, everybody you could imagine and alot more. List of Members.
The manufacturers claim the 10% would put them under. Doesn’t seem to hurt gun companies. Everyone pays the same tax. No poor people are hurt. Camping, hunting, outdoor recreating are almost free as far as equipment. When you get right down to it we don’t need 99% of the junk we buy to recreate.
Maybe this is it. The beginning of the sale of our public lands and a return to all the large species being endangered in N America.