If you ever wonder why so many American birders leaven their love of nature with a little self-loathing, look no further than the National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation, which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service conducts every five years or so. Many of our most puzzling statistics arise from this otherwise innocuous report. In fact, this is the source for the statistic — that approximately 71 million Americans are “bird watchers” — that has been a veritable iceberg to the Titanic of any birding-industry company that took the number at face value.
After enough time to consider that stat, I believe many of us have calculated personal estimates of the number of what can more accurately be called birders, at least for commercial purposes; I won’t share my figure, but will admit that it has far fewer zeroes. But that’s old news. The meme perpetuated by the newest National Survey is far more pernicious…
Wildlife watchers watch for free.
Deadbeats
To clarify, our more generous brothers and sisters on the extractive side of the wildlife appreciation line pay for licenses, excise taxes, and of course, the mighty Duck Stamp. Birders pay bupkis.
I find statements like these offensive both practically and philosophically. Bird watchers definitely pay, even if our economic contributions are patently ignored.
1. As a discrete group (not considering population overlap), non-extractive wildlife watchers contribute more to the U.S. economy than either hunters or anglers:
2011 Fishing Expenditures: $41.8 billion
2011 Hunting Expenditures: $34 billion
2011 Wildlife Watching Expenditures: $55 billion
Obviously, birders are covering the costs associated with wildlife watching. And it is interesting to note that government does very little to subsidize the bird watching experience; state Departments of Natural Resources, for example, maintain plenty of trout fisheries to improve the angling experience, but not a single warbler aviary to add more diversity to spring migration!
Drill into the numbers and you’ll find that birders and wildlife watchers are making significant and growing contributions to various commercial sectors. Paul J. Baicich breaks it down in his Great Birding Projects newsletter:
…expenditures for some important bird-watching items have gone up considerably since 2006. For example, since 2006, binocular and spotting scope expenditures have increased from $654 million to $919 million (up 40%). Also since 2006, bird food sales have increased from almost $3.6 billion to almost $4.1 billion (up 21%). At the same time, nest box, feeder, and bird bath expenditures combined have gone up from $790 million to almost $970 million (up 23%).
Freeloaders
2. Clearly, wildlife watchers as a block contribute more to the national economy than either hunters or anglers. One could also argue that our form of recreation drains far fewer government resources, though that is outside the scope of this argument. What chafes me is why otherwise sensible individuals can quote the previous statistics yet still feel emboldened to perpetuate the trope that wildlife watchers watch for free. It’s that damnable Duck Stamp.
The Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp, better known as the Duck Stamp, serves as both a migratory waterfowl hunting license and an entrance pass for National Wildlife Refuges where admission is normally charged. Even non-hunting wildlife watchers often purchase the Duck Stamp since most of the funds generated from stamp sales go directly into wetland conservation. Consequently, many prominent members of the U.S. birding community promote the annual purchase of Duck Stamps.
I’ve been against buying the Duck Stamp for a long time. In fact, my stance against it has firmed over time, especially in light of this newest National Survey. Proponents of non-hunter adoption of the Duck Stamp have painfully ignored the political realities of a government instrument and have consequently contributed to the marginalization of non-extractive wildlife watchers in America.
That was a mouthful, so I’ll clarify my point by picking on Paul Baicich, for whom I have a great deal of respect as a birder and conservationist. In his analysis of the National Survey, he states, “One of the quiet revelations of the survey is that while hunters and anglers continue to pay their way – through licenses, fees, stamps, and excise taxes – the more numerous wildlife watchers (including birders) do not.” And then his very next headline reads Federal Duck Stamp Art Contest, after which he exhorts birders to buy the Duck Stamp.
When the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service puts together the National Survey, it ascribes zero dollars of Duck Stamp purchases to wildlife watchers. Zero. If you can find the statement in the National Survey that acknowledges that some of the Duck Stamp money comes from wildlife watchers, I’ll eat my beloved Midwest Birding Symposium hat (or more likely just some wild duck.) But that’s not going to happen.
So the statement that birders don’t pay is specious to the extreme when put forth by those who urge birders to pay in ways that are not counted.
Parasites
This issue comes up again and again. Last year, we had a terrific discussion about the pros and cons of the Duck Stamp here. I look forward to more respectful and insightful debates. The fantasy of a birding stamp may be a pipe dream, but apparently that and an excise tax on optics and birdseed would be the only acceptable measure of economic contribution. Isn’t that ridiculous? Every birder I know contributes a lot of time and money to conservation. That money counts. We buy expensive gear and take lavish bird chasing junkets. That money counts. We sustain squirrel populations from coast to coast. Even that money counts, at least as much as the purchase of ammo, bait, and decoys.
Wildlife watchers in the United States spend a lot more money in a year on their collective activities than either hunters or anglers. So what basis exists for anyone to say they — we — don’t pay? I urge everyone to stop perpetuating the damaging, disreputable rumor that wildlife watchers watch for free.
I really dislike antagonism on both sides of this issue. We all want to preserve our wildlife and must work together, and stop bickering about who spends more money, time etc. Just do it. “It” meaning whatever you can do to help the ongoing battle against habitat loss, environmental pollution, energy waste, etc. Buy duck stamps, volunteer at a local refuge or other nature area, contribute money to conservation groups, change your light bulbs, whatever works for you. Put you energy into doing, not arguing.
I don’t see this as bickering at all. So long as we aren’t able to differentiate our voices and interests from the very different (and equally valid, it should be said) voices and interests of the hook and bullet groups, non-game species will continue to get the shaft.
It’s not always about “habitat” in the general sense, it’s about specific habitats, because not all habitats are created, or managed, equally.
I see your point. In California, where I live, riparian and wetlands are the most endangered habitats, with losses of 90-95%, and both hunting and non-hunting groups are working to restore them for the benefit of game and non-game species. So I guess I don’t see that as much of an issue here. I see the problem you are talking about as fighting over limited resources, and the solution to that is to work to get more resources where they are most needed. The more voices speaking for that the better, so we cannot afford to alienate any particular group.
Fair enough, in the east it’s less cut and dried. Marshes and wetlands are overvalued for their duck-hunting productivity. But to use my state of North Carolina as an example, I’d like to see more management of older hardwood forests, montane river valleys, and coastal forests managed for non-game species like migratory birds and herps.
My state wildlife agencies do a pretty good of that to be fair, but not every state shows as much foresight. That’s why it’s nice to have the feds involved.
I completely agree with needing protection for those habitats as well, and having the feds involved, whatever it takes to make that happen.
Hey! Who’s the fat guy digiscoping, obviously free-loading?! Oh wait. That’s me. I do buy the duck stamp, but would rather buy a bird stamp of some sort.
I have previously bought a Duck Stamp at various times. Like Mike, I no longer buy it. Until we have our own stamp to purchase that gets attributed to birders and supports conservation of all habitats and not just duck habitat I won’t be buying one again. I don’t want credit for the money I contribute to conservation to be used to further the political goals of people who just want more animals to shoot.
That’s odd that they think wildlife watchers don’t pay. I have found documents (I swear one of them was created by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) that discuss how birders help the economies of where they go birding. Sure, it’s not in paying for licenses, but birders spend money wherever they go, and not just on optics and bird seed, but on hotels, plane tickets, gas, food, etc. Plus I myself have paid membership fees to Audubon and State and National Park access tolls. I wish they would also take volunteering time into account somehow, it seems like not enough value is ever added to volunteering. It sure seems birders who do not have a lot of money are more than willing to give plenty of hours up to aid in habitat conservation.
I second Vermfly. There are other organizations/non profits to send money too, locally or not.
I do not see this as bickering at all. The validation of the financial contributions of non-extracting wildlife watchers is vital, in that there are current trends to increase hunting and fishing access to more and more public lands where it has previously been excluded, since the hunting lobby maintains that they are the only revenue-generating patrons of these lands. Here in Florida, this debate continues, strongly. Thank you for these insights.
Please read the actual USFWS report. It does not say that wildlife watchers do not pay, in fact just the opposite.
@Robert, what are you talking about, buddy? You make birding look good. If only I had video of your lifer dance!
@Diane, the USFWS National Survey isn’t the issue. My post includes both quotes and links to others who know better saying that wildlife watchers don’t pay. Anyone who has been following this issue over the years have heard the sneers that birders don’t contribute to conservation like hunters do. I’d like to see perception catch up to reality.
And for more engaging discussion on this issue, be sure to check out the thread on the ABA Facebook page, currently at 86 comments!
Wow, great post Mike. You said a lot of things that need to be said, and ~more often~. Problem is, it is excruciatingly difficult to define bird-watching or birders; I have never met two who do it them same way.
very entertaining post, much of which I agree with… the plethora of successful local and franchise ‘birding’ stores that now exist is one sign of the money generated by birding — such stores didn’t exist when I grew up as a birder.
I agree that more money flows from us ‘freeloading’ birders than may be recognized… but pessimistically doubt that in the long run it will make much of a dent in the overall conservation destruction that is ongoing (merely slow it down a little).
As someone on both sides of the issue (a duck hunter and birder) I find all of this to be absurd. Stop whining about the duck stamp, it’s not a big deal. But I guess we have to rile up our feathers over something. As a birder I know I contribute as much or maybe more to the economy and to conservation than as a hunter but can’t we express humility and not expect the recognition we all crave?
@Luke, I appreciate the perspective of someone who enjoys both birding and hunting, but characterizing this discussion as whining is unnecessarily aggressive. This isn’t about looking for a pat on the back. Hunters, particularly duck and deer hunters, enjoy far more political influence in the U.S. than birders. Until we as a group can receive credit for our contributions, we will continue to be marginalized in discussions of conservation policy, habitat protection, and land use policy.
A couple of decades ago, a push was made (both grassroots and in Congress) to create an excise tax on hiking + camping + birding + other non-consumptive wildlife/wilderness recreation equipment.
This was precisely to address the issue of hunters + fishermen paying excise taxes but other users of public lands not doing so. This would have also given birders and conservation interests more clout, since we would be helping pay the bills on wildlife refuges and state game lands.
But due to (right-wing) cries about “tax increases” and due to lobbying by sporting goods manufacturers, the effort was defeated.
I think the single best thing we can do as birders would be to avidly volunteer ourselves as paying excise taxes on binoculars, spotting scopes, tripods and field guides. Then nongame species would get a lot more consideration and state wildlife agencies would hire more nongame biologists. And state-owned lands would go from being “game farms” to being more ecologically sound + balanced.
Agreed with Nate Dias. We are being systematically excluded on the balance sheets because right-wing interests don’t want our greater economic contributions known – if they were widely known, then the right-wingers’ hegemony (and clout with and through gun/hunting enthusiasts) would wane. It’s all about money and power. There is a cultural component as well – the whole cult of masculinity that attaches to species that can be hunted – warbler-watching ain’t manly, for most people in this culture. So there’s more than just political power and campaign dollars at stake. What I would like to see is a deep economic analysis that shows all outlays related to our practices, all outlays related to hunters’ practices, then a tandem analysis of what states and the federal government spend in direct support of these practices and activities. Then subtract the government expenditures from the hobbyists’ outlays. I suspect that birders and other wildlife watchers would produce black ink, while the good old boys would be in the red ink (with the frat boys running Wall Street, also subsidized heavily by government monies).
Hear hear to Nate and Ned.
As Mike said, it’s not whining because I feel like the bird community and culture has matured to the point where we deserve the right to have a spotlight, as it were.
I hear so often that the Duck Stamp is such a wonderful tool because the overhead is so low, that a huge percentage of the price goes to habitat acquisition. And that is, of course, true. But that same low overhead tells me that the startup for some sort of birding or wildlife equivalent should be negligible. Heck, this seems tailor made for the American Birding Association to run the associated contests and sales. The only thing standing in our way is the inertia of the status quo.
Hunters and birders should be the twin towers of conservation funding in this country. I would feel a lot better about banding together with hunting interests for the same general causes if we were able to get some due credit for it once in a while.
The state of Maine has a Birder Band program in which birders “register” their binocular information (phone number #) with the state and in exchange the birder gets a metal ID band to attach to their binocular strap. 100% of the cost goes to bird habitat-related projects from the Dept. of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.
http://www.maine.gov/ifw/wildlife/species/endangered_species/birder_band.htm
Although we outspend hunters etc. birders have no unified political face. I think that’s ABA’s job. I’d like to see more on this topic than on rare birds and other trivia.
I love that program, Nick. I’d love to see it everywhere.
Terry, the ABA’s job should be to represent the interests of North American (yes, Canadian too, where there is no FWS or Duck Stamp) birders. Yes, that should include presenting a unified political front where appropriate.
But I don’t think we should have to apologize for an interest in rare birds and birding cultural arcana, because that’s part of who we are too. That’s part of the fun and community of birding that, I would argue, is a bigger part of what the ABA should be.
Besides, in order to be an effective voice for birds, we need numbers. I want the ABA to be that, and I know the ABA wants to be that too, but we need to build to it. We need your help and all the other birders out there to invest in the ABA to make that happen. Come join us! (If you haven’t already of course. If you have, then thanks!)
Nate Dias, thanks for bringing up the CARA legislation. It was also opposed, not surprisingly, by some vocal hunting interests.
In case people are still reading this post, one of the reasons we birders need to get off our butts and get statistics out there on the number of “wildlife watchers” and go full speed ahead on creating an alternative to the duck stamp is this: “New rule expands hunting in 14 states!”
We obviously need to have our concerns of bird conservation heard rather than simply acquiesce to the needs of the hunting contingent. After all, the duck stamp primarily concerns waterfowl. What about non-game species?
You folks do realize that hunters only harvest about 6% of the migratory fowl per year and that big game hunters take less than the sustainable harvest totals in each state. some of you make it sound like hunters are evil and detracting from your ability to enjoy the outdoors.
Most hunters would welcome more passive users if they would simply respect that hunters have paved the way for wildlife viewers to enjoy these places and that we are not there to just kill everything in sight. That attitude is ignorant and offensive.
As for expenditures, while wildlife viewers do spend lots of money and boost local and state economies annually, very little of those funds trickle down to conservation. Unlike hunting and fishing license sales, stamp sales, ad valorem taxes, documentary stamps funds and other earmarked revenues, retail sales and tourism dollars do not get directly applied to conservation funding.
And just so you are aware, I hope all of you who belong to the ABA spend a little time learning about John Audubon and his best friend and father of the ABA, George Grinnel… both of them were world class wing shooters and big game hunters first and foremost.
As both birder and hunter, I realize the economic goods of the birder and wildlife viewer. I think where the hunter comments come into play is in direct relationship to monies derived for NWRs, WMA and the likes. No one can deny that birders spend money and that money flows into the economy both nationally and locally within specific birding areas and that it is very much welcomed. Here in Florida, a Wildlife Management Area Permit is required of hunters on most state lands and some joint Federal lands as well. Those monies are then placed into trust funds for the maintenance and well being of those lands enrolled. This funding is also used on these lands to provide for passive recreational activities, such a birding, hiking, camping and equestrian usage. This is where I believe that the hunters feel that others are not paying their share for usage. Arguments on both sides have been heard as to consumptive vs. passive recreation. As a birder, a hunter and one who believes that conservation is more than providing for hunting, I too would be willing to pay for such an activity where needed and especially those areas which do not allow for hunting and are previously covered by a purchased permit. Again I believe that it isn’t whether money is spend by the Birding community so much as where it is spend in direct correlation to conservation.
Chuck, I find it interesting that you are commenting on a post that is almost two years old but I would like to inform you about some of the common misrepresentations you expound such as “hunters have paved the way for wildlife viewers to enjoy these places.”
Indeed, after market hunting and predator eradication programs nearly wiped out many species during the 19th and early 20th centuries several influential hunters, such as Theodore Roosevelt, George Grinnel and Aldo Leopold, helped spearhead programs to place controls on what was until that time unlimited killing for various purposes.
Of course, back then, many poeple hunted for food as a necessity (unlike today when most hunting is done in the name of “sport”) but even hunters realized that without some kind of controls, they would soon have nothing left to shoot. After all, in the last three decades of the nineteenth century, an American buffalo herd once numbering 30 million animals was reduced to twenty-three. Somthing had to be done.
As to your comments on funding. Even as Pittman-Robertson brings in money for state wildlife departments, what’s not pointed out is that a majority of gun owners are not hunters. A U.S. Department of Justice survey showed that just 35 percent of gun owners hunted. Although I don’t have the exact figure of how much ammo is purchased and taxed for P-R by hunters, we can safely say hunters are not just a tiny minority of U.S. citizens (6 percent) they are also a minority demographic among those who own firearms. So, when Pittman-Robertson funds are attributed in FULL to hunters, that too, is inaccurate.
The same mechanism is at play on National Wildlife Refuges with Duck Stamp funding. Duck Stamps make up only a portion of the Migratory Bird Conservation Fund dollars, and those MBCF dollars in turn, have purchased about 3 percent of Refuge lands. The rest come from public appropriations and other sources. So, when the argument is used, again, that hunters fund our Refuges, that notion is patently false.
Hunters, as a demographic, are obviously organized under umbrellas of extremely powerful groups which perpetuate the status quo. The NRA has helped draft legislation pertaining to hunting privileges on public lands, and numerous groups, including advisory committees on the Federal level, have input in terms of increasing hunter access on public lands and hunter recruitment. In fact, if you read the various documents pertaining to these projects, you find that there are common talking points that have led to some of the familiar vernacular we see over and over in the media — including the meme about promoting hunters as conservationists.
Lastly, part of the reason hunters can fudge a bit on the truth here is that their numbers tend to be consolidated. Pittman-Robertson funds are easy to account for, as are other figures related to conservation revenue — like Duck Stamp dollars. Non-hunters, on the other hand, distribute their monies and volunteer hours across many conservancies and organizations. I personally contribute thousands of dollars a year to wildlife rehabilitation and wildland habitat which aren’t documented in a singular way as is a hunter’s purchase of a Duck Stamp.
So, although this makes it difficult to get an accurate accounting of the non-hunting contribution to conservation, when you start adding up figures from all of the land trusts, wildlife organizations, conservancies, state and federal parks (funded through public dollars) — and on and on — you start to see that the balance swings in favor of non-consumptive users as conservationists, even financially. At the very least, we are not slackers on the conservation front as many groups would like the public to believe. The idea of non-hunters having to “pony up” in order to match what hunters have done for conservation is a misguided idea based on the fallacy that we don’t contribute — which couldn’t be further from the truth.
I am a resident of Oak Harbor, Ohio and see first hand how destructive some birders can be. The people that live here know exactly when birders arrive and when they leave. Simply because of the trash left behind we have to pick up. If there is no trash receptacles… take it with you. Our bird observatory is off of state route 2… yes A STATE ROUTE meaning traffic doesn’t slow down for you on the side of the road. It’s 55 to 65 depending where you are on this road. Just the other day I had to come to a full stop on my way home because a birder had wandered into traffic while looking through his fancy camera trying to get the perfect shot. As he approached the middle of the lane I politely reminded him to get off the road with full blast of my horn. You want to support wildlife conservation do it the same way I do by buying a hunting and fishing license. If I get a deer or catch fish I’m covered and if I don’t at least it was money well spent. If you really want to help volunteer to sponsor a mile of highway to cleanup so you can see how much trash there is that can harm our wildlife. Green Cove is my home, the Black Swamp bird observatory is run by people I know and respect. MaGee East is run by people I also know and respect. Let alone it’s also where my extended family lives and works. It wouldn’t kill you to leave a decent tip either you leave a bad tip you’ll be remembered and not like you want to be.