Hardly a week passes that I don't see or hear another proclamation on how hunting and trapping (and sometimes even sportfishing) are going the route of the dinosaurs. Just about all of these base their assumptions on the general decline of sporting license sales nationwide. However, basing such conclusions on license figures alone fails to accurately project all the facts involved and also doesn't mean that these activities are neither as needed nor as accepted by the general public as they were in the past.
In the last decade, the number of hunters has declined about 10 percent nationwide. During that same period, the population rose by 5 percent. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the number of hunters nationwide has dropped 24 percent, from about 50 million 20 years ago to about 38 million. Wildlife management officials say urbanization, sprawling development and competition for free time have resulted in fewer hunters. And not as many youths are taking up this rite of generation passage that dates back to frontier times, which is leading to an overall aging of the hunting population today.
Historically, people in the United States (and Canada) looked to the land to gather food and provide for their households. Being independent, self-sufficient and hard working, providing for oneís family, while being a steward of the land ó these values and lifestyles are traditionally and distinctly part of the fabric of our society and culture, and despite urban and suburban dependency on third-parties for sustenance, those demographic roots remain present in many areas of the nation today, despite the increased dependency on others for our sustenance.
As wildlife habitat continues to be fragmented and eliminated by land development, today's wildlife managers are confronted with new challenges: Increasing occurrences of car-deer accidents, coyotes and cougars killing pets, bears destroying property, beavers cutting ornamental trees and flooding roads and driveways, raccoons and skunks invading buildings and threatening public health with diseases and parasites. These kinds of negative human-wildlife conflicts have helped reduce public tolerance and appreciation of wildlife but also often cause people to better grasp the importance hunting and trapping play in wildlife management.
Animal rights became a popular cause several decades ago and often attracted not only uninformed and misled supporters, but also huge sums of money, the vast majority being used to recruit more funding, pay administrative executives, and to lobby against hunting, trapping, farming, pet ownership, and almost anything else involving animals, both wild and domestic. Sadly, too many people today don't know the difference between animal rights support and animal welfare support.
Animal rights proponents oppose ANY human use of animals. They believe animals have the same rights as humans, and therefore should not be used, consumed or owned by people in any way or form. The primary concern of animal welfare advocates is the well-being of the animals themselves. The primary concern of animal rights advocates is the moral obligation of people while the well-being of animals is, at best, a secondary concern. Professional wildlife biologists advocate animal welfare, and mimicking nature's balancing of its wards, they understand sound management is critical for the various animals' welfare as species. Otherwise, nature would do it through starvation or disease, and it would not be a pleasant sight to behold. The U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service released preliminary data from its 2006 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife Associated Recreation, an assessment of participation trends among Americans over age 16, compiled at five-year intervals. Hunter numbers, according to the survey, fell by 4 percent nationwide since 2001. Only 5 percent of Americans now consider themselves hunters. So from that, one might believe the animal rights proponents are edging out the animal welfare proponents. Not by a long shot.
