{"id":1482,"date":"2010-12-13T10:25:49","date_gmt":"2010-12-13T15:25:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=1482"},"modified":"2010-12-13T10:28:30","modified_gmt":"2010-12-13T15:28:30","slug":"unintended-consequences-when-hunters-stay-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=1482","title":{"rendered":"Unintended Consequences When Hunters Stay Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

by the Associated Press, NEW YORK TIMES, December 12, 2010<\/em><\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a> Classroom desks and office cubicles stand empty. Hunters in blaze orange stand out like drops of bright paint against brown fields. Parking lots at bars are crowded with pickup trucks draped with deer carcasses.<\/p>\n

This is Wisconsin\u2019s gun deer season, a tradition as engrained in the state\u2019s identity as beer, brats and cheese. But as the years slide by, fewer people seem to care.<\/p>\n

Hunting\u2019s popularity has waned across much of the country as housing tracts replace forests, aging hunters hang up their guns and youngsters sit down in front of Facebook<\/a> rather than venture outdoors.<\/p>\n

The falloff could have far-reaching consequences beyond the beginning of the end for an American tradition, hunting enthusiasts say. With fewer hunters, there is less revenue for a multibillion-dollar industry and government conservation efforts.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs paradoxical as it may seem, if hunting were to disappear, a large amount of the funding that goes to restore all sorts of wildlife habitat, game and nongame species alike, would disappear,\u201d said Steve Sanetti, the president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation.<\/p>\n

Hunting generates billions in retail sales and pumps hundreds of millions of dollars into government conservation efforts annually through license sales and federal taxes on firearms and ammunition sales.<\/p>\n

But fewer hunters are involved in the sport each year. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service<\/a> estimates that 33 states had declines in hunting license sales over the last two decades. The sharpest drop was in Massachusetts, where there has been a 50 percent falloff in hunting license sales during that time.<\/p>\n

Millions of Americans still hunt, of course, and some states have had increases in license sales over the last 20 years. But the overarching decline has outdoor advocates worried.<\/p>\n

Suburban sprawl has consumed prime hunting land, forcing many hunters to choose between driving for hours to get to the woods or staying home.<\/p>\n

Gerald Feaser, a Pennsylvania Game Commission spokesman, said his state\u2019s urban footprint had nearly doubled since the early 1980s.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhole farms turned into housing developments or shopping malls,\u201d he said. \u201cOnce that land is lost, you can\u2019t get it back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fewer youngsters are taking up hunting, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cFifty years ago, a lot of kids would hunt and fish and be outside,\u201d said Mark Damian Duda, the executive director of Responsive Management, a natural resources research group in Virginia. \u201cNow it\u2019s easier to sit in your playroom and play video games.\u201d<\/p>\n

The drop-offs have hurt state conservation agencies that rely heavily on revenue from license sales.<\/p>\n

In Massachusetts, the lost revenue has hampered the state\u2019s habitat restoration efforts and its ability to repair its vehicles. [Read rest of story]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Talk about unintended consequences: a decline in hunting — due in great part to forest habitat lost to urbanization — is leading to a decline in our ability to conserve the forests that remain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[869,872,871,870,537],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1482"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1482"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1484,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1482\/revisions\/1484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}