For some sportsmen, the trend in America of paying a fee for access to good hunting spots is no big deal.
It’s been around for a long time in the form of waterfowl-hunting clubs. More recently, the better upland bird areas have been shifting to pay-to-hunt.
Big-game hunting in western North America largely escaped the trend. National forests, state forests, Bureau of Land Management and state wildlife agency lands provided a large base that was supplemented often by big holdings of private timber companies.
The industrial forest landowners allowed public hunting as a way to lessen deer and elk damage to young trees, plus hunting was just a part of the Western culture. Timber company employees and ownership hunted too.
Weyerhaeuser’s debut in 2014 of a $150 permit to hunt on 325,000 acres of its land in Southwest Washington marks a watershed event locally.
Eric Holman, district wildlife biologist for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, says the change — charging fees and limiting access to vast areas of traditional hunting grounds — is ultimately bad for hunting and therefore bad for wildlife.
“This change attacks the very premise of wildlife management in North America — that the wildlife belongs to everybody,” he said.
North America has a unique wildlife management system, Holman said. The system combines license fees, taxes and donations.
The hunting license fees are self explanatory, and don’t forget federal fees like duck stamps ($15), required for waterfowl hunting.
Sportsmen also are taxed through the Pittman-Robertson program.
Adopted in 1937 and named after its two key legislators, the Pittman-Robertson program is a federal excise tax on firearms and handguns, their ammunition and accessories, plus archery equipment.
The money goes to the Secretary of the Interior to distribute to states, based on a formula that takes into account the area of a state and the number of licensed hunters.
None of the money can be used by anyone other than the state’s fish and wildlife agency.
Donations from conservation organizations also have been huge for North American wildlife.
Ducks Unlimited, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Safari Club International, Wild Turkey Federation, Mule Deer Foundation and the Foundation for North American Wild Sheep are just of few of these organizations.
They raise millions of dollars through annual local banquets and have funneled huge amounts of money into habitat preservation. Also, they can act more quickly to save an imperiled piece of property than the state or federal agencies.
“Hunted wildlife species such as waterfowl, elk, pronghorn, white-tailed deer and wild sheep have rebounded from historic population low-points around 1900 under this system,” Holman said.
“Wildlife that are generally not hunted have benefited from this as well due to the establishment and maintenance of habitats that support much more than game species and from the development of the science and tools used to manage all wildlife.
“This occurred because a large social-political entity (hunters) valued, funded and advocated for the animals and because large amounts of habitat on a combination of public and private lands was available for the wildlife and those who hunted them.”
Holman said it will take time to learn the management implications of the trend toward privatization of wildlife.
But he’s not optimistic.
“Privatization, even when veiled in the form of access limitations, erodes this relationship and therefore the social and economic support for wildlife,” Holman said.
“This is true whether it’s on a private game reserve in Europe, a fenced white-tailed deer ranch in Texas or and industrial tree farm with severe access restrictions.”
