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		Nature Conservancy Magazine: Autumn 2006 Nature Conservancy Magazine Sale of the Century Up Close Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom Hunter, Angler, Conservationist The Stamp of Conservation Nature Stories Podcast Nature Landmarks Nature Books Nature Travel Nature Preserves Subscribe Previous Issues

Hunter, Angler, Conservationist

Page 4

“Do we have the luxury of questioning people’s motives who want to preserve the natural world?” Bart Semcer The Sierra Club

Stakes are High
To be sure, there will always be issues on which some conservationists and hunters disagree—such as the protection of big carnivores and regulations such as the Endangered Species Act.

But it’s possible to bridge the divide, says Gary Kania, who until recently was the Conservancy’s liaison with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and now works with the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation. “There are enough goals that are the same,” says Kania, who has also worked for the National Rifle Association. “The NRA is not the Conservancy, but the NRA represents a lot of hunters, and what do hunters want, primarily? They want habitat for wildlife. We may disagree about other things, but we can argue about that later. First, we can use our common goals to leverage resources and get things done now.”

Matt Miller of the Conservancy in Idaho says such partnerships are urgently needed: “I have been a hunter my whole life, growing up in Pennsylvania, and you see all the places that you’ve hunted and fished—the place that I ran my traplines when I was young—get swallowed up by sprawl. Sometime, even in high school, I realized that if we didn’t do something, it would all be gone. It’s why I became a conservationist in the first place.”

The Sierra Club’s Semcer knows there are differences in how environmentalists and hunters view the world, but says, “I’d ask people on either side, ‘Do we have the luxury of questioning people’s motives who want to preserve the natural world?’”

“We are at a point in history where the stakes are way high,” says Semcer, “and if we don’t trust each other, we all lose.”   

HAL HERRING is a contributing editor at Field & Stream and editor at large at New West, an Internet publication covering the Rocky Mountains and Western plains. With more than twenty years in the photography business, KEN REDDING has a portfolio of images ranging from sports and landscapes to golf and interiors. He resides in Grand Junction, Colorado.

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