Delivering on our habitat mission benefits members well beyond the hunting public
By Brent Rudolph, Pheasants Forever & Quail Forever's Director of Sustainability Partnerships
Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever’s Build a Wildlife Area® (BAWA) program has been a tremendous success, and it continues to expand and grow.
Through our BAWA program, we purchase land from willing sellers, typically convey it to public ownership open to all legal hunting, and work to improve and sustain quality habitat on these acres well after that transition. We’ve permanently protected over 229,000 acres since 1982. With continued growth of the program, at the time I’m writing this we have nearly 60 new strategic projects – and counting – in active development across 15 states.
Diverse audiences benefit from this program, and to continue this growth we’re attracting more support from some unexpected places. Our BAWA projects provide quality habitat and preserve our outdoor heritage by increasing hunting opportunities, and they’re also an outstanding sustainability solution. What do I mean by that?
The word “sustainability” shows up in a lot of places these days. A quick search on the term will turn up thoughts, commitments, and sustainability definitions from many different business, industry, and academic perspectives. As hunters, we’ve always been focused on sustainability by ensuring we have huntable populations of wildlife not only this year, but sustained in perpetuity for future generations. Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever work to ensure this by building and maintaining quality habitat. As we do that, that habitat also boosts biodiversity (adding more species of plants, insects and wildlife to the landscape), provides climate solutions (sequestering carbon, and making lands and communities more resilient to extreme weather), and promotes water stewardship (storing floodwater, recharging aquifers, and filtering runoff), which are three important aspects of sustainability.
You might wonder, if we have a growing program that members, chapters, and long-term supporters can get behind, do we really need to build bridges to new audiences? Do we need to bring new and different supporters on board with a promise of delivering these other benefits?
The thing is, our Build a Wildlife Area® program is an incredible success story, but the story is incomplete – at least for now. Our pheasants, quail, pollinators, and other upland wildlife have historically lost so much habitat, the way forward requires us to continue to gain much more ground.
At the same time, people are concerned about the health of our planet and future generations. They know they need to make different choices to reduce their impact on nature and wildlife, and the public increasingly realizes the companies and brands they support with their purchases, investments, and careers can – and should – decrease their corporate impact through their choices and causes they support as well. There are ways to promote sustainability that DON’T involve creating quality upland habitat, so it’s up to us to make the case for upland habitat as a smart investment and add collaborators to help us complete the success story.
Pheasants, quail, and other upland wildlife need more support and more acres of habitat. Our growing population needs clean water, human communities secure from natural disasters, and thriving wildlife communities with a diversity of species. Your non-hunting neighbors probably realize elephants and rainforests need their help, but they might appreciate learning how they can support meadowlarks and prairies a little closer to home – with a better chance to get out and see the results of their decisions for themselves. Add to that the perspective that a new or expanded wildlife area can support the people and places around them through sustainability benefits they might not have thought about, and we’ll have a broader base of shared values from which to build collaboration.
There’s a saying “let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.” My friends, this bridge is here in front of us, and I’m seeing a brighter future for huntable populations of wildlife, outdoor recreation, and sustainable communities on the other side!
We appreciate any personal contributions you can make during Build a Wildlife Area Week or any other time of the year. Please also share the opportunity with your family, friends, and neighbors, and explore how local businesses or your own employer develops sustainability commitments that could be well aligned with a donation to our Build a Wildlife Area® program. Whether or not your contacts share your passion for hunting, let’s build bridges that can get us all to a destination we’ll be proud to head for together.