The North American model of hunting and conservation has relied on a three-legged support system which balances the interests of managing game populations by and through providing hunting opportunities to citizens on the top of that proverbial table. Beneath the platform, the three legs of having game to hunt, habitat in which that game lives, and ways of accessing that habitat by hunters have provided general stability for the last century, since the U.S. turned the tide of declining bird and game populations resulting from commercialization and overharvest.

The positive to come out of this three-legged model which has paralleled the challenges, balancing acts, and readjustments of the experiment of American democracy, is that we’ve seen many species brought back from the brink, reintroduced to native areas, and even established in spaces where they had not been before. Through the management of forests, we find populations of thriving ruffed grouse. Via the protection of native prairie, we preserve numbers of sharptailed grouse and even prevent the disappearance of their close cousin, the prairie chicken. Along with those efforts, countless other species from big ones like moose, elk and deer, to smaller ones, such as pheasants, rabbits and squirrels, all provide hunting opportunities. And while habitat has been the rallying cry and the focus for many non-government organizations and wildlife management agencies throughout the country, and the forefront of those entities’ efforts for the past 30 years, a new challenge threatens to undo the balance of the three-legged model of conservation.

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, hunter participation across the country was generally declining. While the phenomenon of social distancing and finding things to do away from others spurred more people into the outdoors and reactivated participation in hunting for a year or two, the trend of decreasing hunters on the landscape was notable in the seasons leading up to that event. The most frequent reason given for hunters hanging up their boots for the past two decades has been the lack of access. It is that access that now rivals the presence of quality habitat as the greatest challenge in maintaining a robust North American model of hunting and conservation.

Having public acres to hunt is as important as the other two legs on the model. Not everyone in the U.S. is fortunate enough to own or even lease hunting land, but desires to experience the thrill of a deer walking into bow range or an upland bird breaking cover with thunderous wingbeats. As a result, to keep that experience open to all, an abundance of access is necessary, even in the light of declining hunter participation, and in fact is the best way to counter it. Further, this access allows for better management of the resource and helps develop an appreciation for all things which not only make hunting possible, but also make our world better: greener landscapes, cleaner waters, healthier ecosystems, and more wildlife of all types from songbirds to bighorn sheep.

Like keeping an eye on the amount and quality of habitat on the landscape, monitoring access opportunities falls to hunters and conservationists who as participatory citizens are responsible for protecting the process and interacting with their government to manage such opportunities in this country. Once again, we are observing an attempt to shorten one of the legs of the model, and it falls to those of us in the hunting public to raise the red flag.

Under the senate’s changes to the “Big Beautiful Bill” sitting before congress and being rushed through to meet an arbitrary July 4 deadline, millions of acres of public lands throughout the western U.S. are being earmarked for sale to private individuals and corporations in order to make up for the tax breaks given to companies and the ultra-rich in a foolhardy attempt to balance the federal budget by taking from the people. Estimates put the public acres at risk of being sold (also likely to corporations and those well connected within the government) from 3 million acres up to a possible 18.7 million acres in the next year alone, with similar sales likely to occur each year thereafter. These varied spaces consist primarily of areas dedicated to wildlife, migration corridors, and habitat preservation, but they all share one thing in common — they are open to the public.

These places are the truest definition of “our outdoors.” Every American citizen has the opportunity, if not the right, to visit them, to hike them, to hunt them, to fish them, and as a result, we bear the responsibility to protect them from unjust and wanton disposal to the highest bidder to make up for the ineptitude of our elected officials who haven’t gotten their finances straight — let alone the priority of representing the people — for the last 30 years.

Much like when birds began to disappear from the skies, when big game vanished from the plains, and when wild spaces went silent from lack of wildlife a hundred years ago, we once again have a chance to turn the tide, perhaps even before the ebb begins. Take time now to contact your senator and oppose the sale of these vital public lands and stay vigilant to any further schemes which take from all of us to benefit the top 1% and an inept governing body, because once the precedent is set and acres start vanishing and access disappears, so will the rest … of our outdoors.