<< Back 12/25/02 Hunters, fishermen and conservation By Gary Peeples How many American presidents have a game list that includes grizzly bears, lions, and elephants? Teddy Roosevelt, a founder of the Boone and Crockett Club, was one of our nation’s most famous and accomplished hunters and conservationists. Hunters and anglers have a long tradition of being conservationists. At the turn of the 19th century, sportsmen were leaders in the movement to stop market hunting — the wholesale slaughter of wildlife for commercial markets that led to the extinction of the passenger pigeon and the near extinction of the bison. Through excise taxes paid on hunting and fishing equipment, billions of dollars have been raised to help states manage fisheries and wildlife and acquire and manage public land for the benefit of citizens. Ducks Unlimited has played an important role in wetland conservation, and Trout Unlimited helps protect the headwaters of our rivers and streams and riparian areas. The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation has helped in the effort to bring elk back to the Smokies. Roosevelt, as president of the United States 99 years ago, created the first National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) — Pelican Island NWR on Florida’s Atlantic Coast. The tiny five-acre refuge was established to protect pelicans from over-harvesting. These birds weren’t sought for sport, or even for food, but for their feathers, which were used in ladies hats and as ink quills. Since then, the National Wildlife Refuge System has grown to more than 90 million acres, providing hunting and fishing opportunities to millions of Americans and habitat for endangered and threatened species. In establishing Pelican Island NWR, Roosevelt demonstrated that he valued the American outdoors for all it had to offer — that the gangly, smelly pelican had a place beside the trophy elk. In this hunting season, it’s important to remember that it isn’t just about the deer, the duck, or the turkey. It’s about a healthy outdoors — quality forests, intact wetlands, clean rivers, and clean air. It’s about an outdoors that includes forests and grasslands, an outdoors that includes the wild turkey and the endangered spruce-fir moss spider. As Americans, we must remember: this is our land, and we are responsible for the wildlife in the forests and the fish in the streams. As sportsmen and women and citizens, we each have a role to play and a vested interest in the health of our ecosystems. I challenge today’s hunters and fishermen to remember your conservation heritage and to live up to the examples set by predecessors such as Roosevelt and Aldo Leopold. When you are outdoors, value the sight of a cerulean warbler as well as a buck and value the silence of the dawn and the coldness of the river. These are things that are easy to take for granted. New roads and development infringe on more and more silent moments each day, and a tiny exotic insect, called the hemlock woolly adelgid, has begun killing the hemlocks that shade our trout streams. Look at the places where you hunt and fish and take careful notice. Are invasive plants like privet and kudzu moving in? Are the rivers and streams filled with sediment? Are roads getting closer and closer to your favorite hunting and fishing spots? Don’t leave the woods behind when you get into your vehicle to head home. Ask yourself how you can improve not just this area but all our land. When Boy Scouts leave a campsite, they have a goal of leaving the place better than they found it. As we look into the future, we should take the same approach. The management and proper use of our land will be our legacy, so let us leave the rivers cleaner and healthier than we found them, the air purer, and fish and wildlife populations healthier. (Peeples is the Outreach Specialist for the Asheville office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He can be contacted at 828.258.3939, ext. 234.)