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CONSERVATION CORNER
(For the week of December 15, 2008)
Hunter Green
by James L. Cummins

Today's green movement uses certain words - organic, locavore (one who eats locally grown food) and renewable - to the amusement of 20 million of us who've actually lived the eco-friendly lifestyle that these words describe. We are hunters.

Our numbers have been steadily declining beneath a culture growing ever faster, more complex and distant from its rural ancestry and we are admittedly somewhat smaller than we used to be. Now, like gathering fresh eggs, growing vegetables and raising farm animals for the table (which is what my grandparents did to survive), the inclination and skill to harvest Earth's bounty of wild game - and to pass on this tradition to those longing for simpler ways of life - resides in a few of us.

The meats that hunters and their families consume are free of hormones, processed feeds or fences. High in protein, low in fat and cholesterol, wild game is organic. The American Cancer Society and American Heart Association recommend duck, pheasant, rabbit and venison over many commercially produced, packaged and distributed alternatives because of these advantages.

Data gathered by the National Shooting Sports Foundation shows that 84 percent of hunters hunt exclusively in our home states. Only 5 percent never hunt locally. Compared with consumers of U.S. supermarket food, which routinely travels as much as 2,500 miles from source to table, we are model locavores.

Begun well over a hundred years ago, the success of modern conservation can only be fully understood against the backdrop of historical slaughter for markets that took 40 million buffalo to the brink of extinction and 5 billion passenger pigeons beyond it. It was hunters who led a revolution for responsible use of these resources. Game limits, seasons and wildlife conservation funds all came from hunters. Because of us, white-tailed deer, pronghorn antelope, elk, wild turkey, wood ducks and hundreds of other cherished life forms transitioned from vanishing to flourishing. We are very proud of this accomplishment.

Through licenses, tags, permits, fees and special excise taxes on firearms and ammunition, hunters have paid more than $5.3 billion for conservation since 1939. And we pushed for this tax on ourselves. No conservation system has accomplished more. In fact, the price of hunting licenses is rising faster than the rate of inflation by more than 30 percent. Each year America's hunters contribute more and more for the benefit of wildlife.

For us, the amusing thing is that American society, which has looked down its nose at hunters more harshly with each passing generation, is discovering that camouflage has been a most important shade of green all along.