Understanding the Public Image of the US Animal Protection Movement

The 2006 National Audubon Society survey of the economic impacts of wildlife watching states that wildlife watching over the past decade has become the fastest growing outdoor activity. It is growing at 8% per year while hunting has declined by 1% per year. It has doubled in the past decade. With several major reports (the Global Footprint report) stating that in the past 35 years, wildlife populations across the globe have diminished 35 % - and postulating that we may be destroying as much as 1% of the species on earth every year now, I think we need to work for living wildlife columns in major newspapers across the country URGENTLY to educate the public about this crisis. The reasons given for species extinction and overall decline in numbers include legal and illegal hunting - along with animal agriculture, pollution, and the big one - human overpopulation. We have outdoors columns in newspapers across the country that are blatantly killing advocacy - with no humane response - even though we wildlife watchers bring many times the revenue to state and local tax coffers through our activities. The fact that KILLING LICENSES and PITTMAN-ROBERTSON funds are the primary funding INTERNAL mechanisms of state wildlife agencies biases the system at the core. I cannot go in and buy a license to protect - in fact, protecting wildlife is "hunter harrassment" and it is illegal even to house a fawn whose mother has been killed on the road - the DNR will come out and kill the fawn if they find out about it. This basic undemocratic systemic set-up is the core cause of killing as conservation and management in our state agencies. We cannot afford to have this continue. We need: MEDIA VOICE WEEKLY TO COUNTER THE OUTDOORS PAGES KILLING/TROPHY ADVOCACY, SYSTEMIC DEMOCRATIC REVISION OF OUR STATE AGENCIES TO GIVE FAIR VOICE - FAIR PAY AND SAY to the majority non-hunting public (That means that we need GENERAL PUBLIC FUNDING OF STATE AGENCIES FOR WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT and BIODIVERSITY CONGRESSES THAT ARE ELECTED WITH FAIR REPRESENTATION MANDATED for decisions on policy), REVISION OF PITTMAN-ROBERTSON - something like 60% of the taxes levied are on home protection and gun collectors - not hunters - yet the money is designated to state agencies and funneled into providing more living targets, WE NEED A NATIONAL VOICE AND STATE AND COUNTY ORGANIZING like the rod and gun clubs across every state who lobby and have taken over our legislative key positions where humane legislation for wildlife is blocked by special interests. We need to work at the grassroots. For all of this it is media weekly columns that can organize our efforts! Those are what I would propose for wildlife. The hunting/trapping groups are now allying with the beef, pork, chicken, lamb, and dairy interests to strengthen themselves. We need to work at the core of all of these issues. Part of the problem is religion. We need to go to the religions most likely to reverence all life and raise these issues - and find out the positions of the Catholic church and Protestants and try to find ways to break in.