Hunter, Angler, Conservationist

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The Original Conservationists
The idea that hunters are responsible for providing habitat for the game they hunt, and for the ecosystems that support game and other wildlife, is one of the oldest forms of environmental advocacy in North America, owing its existence to men like Theodore Roosevelt. Born in 1858, Roosevelt grew up steeped in the lore of Western hunting and adventure. But by the time he went west to hunt big game in 1883, he rode on horseback for 10 days across the grasslands of North Dakota before finding a bison to shoot. Roosevelt felt keenly the loss of a legacy that he believed had belonged to all Americans. He also saw, in the ruin of wildlife, the potential ruin of the nation.

When Roosevelt became president, he enacted the most sweeping environmental legislation the world had ever seen. “When he entered the White House in 1901, the idea of conservation had not yet found its way into the public mind,” writes Jim Posewitz, author of Rifle in Hand: How Wild America Was Saved. “When he left office in 1909, he had implanted the idea of conservation into our culture and enriched our future prospects with 230 million acres of designated public forests, wildlife refuges, bird preserves, parks, national monuments, and game ranges.”

Roosevelt’s mentor, the naturalist and hunter George Bird Grinnell, had traveled through the West when the great herds of elk and pronghorn and bison still flowed over the Plains. Grinnell founded the prototypical sporting magazine Forest and Stream (later Field & Stream), and argued for the preservation of the wildlife and wild country that was left. He later founded the first Audubon Society and was instrumental in creating Glacier and Yellowstone national parks.

Together, Roosevelt, Grinnell and nine others founded the Boone and Crockett Club, which called for an end to market hunting, the protection of American bison and the establishment of game laws—radical changes in the way Americans viewed wildlife. (The Boone and Crockett Club is still around; it owns a sprawling ranch on Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front dedicated to wildlife habitat, research and education. The Conservancy holds a conservation easement on the property.)

The low point for North American wildlife is considered to be 1910. By the 1930s, “There was still not much game to hunt anywhere, but there was a lot of hope among American hunters,” writes Posewitz. In that decade, hunters and gun companies sponsored two laws that have funded the most far-reaching restoration of wildlife and habitat in history.

The Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act, popularly know as the Pittman-Robertson Act, created an 11 percent tax on sporting firearms and ammunition and a 10 percent tax on handguns to support wildlife conservation and to promote hunter safety. In the 75 years since it was enacted, Pittman-Robertson has raised more than $5 billion for conservation. Those funds will contribute more than $233 million this year, mainly to support wildlife management areas that provide habitat and public access for everything from hiking and fishing to bird-watching and hunting.

The other law, the Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp Act, requires waterfowl hunters aged 16 and older to possess a valid federal hunting stamp, commonly known as a duck stamp. Sales of the stamps have brought in nearly $700 million since the program’s inception in 1934 and have helped to purchase and establish 5.2 million acres of the National Wildlife Refuge system (see The Stamp of Conservation). During the 2002–2003 hunting season, duck-stamp sales brought in almost $26 million, and 98 cents of every dollar went to purchase habitat for waterfowl—habitat that also serves every other creature that walks, swims, crawls or flies there. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that one-third of the nation’s threatened and endangered species live on one or more of the refuges.  

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