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Steve "not the Wildman" Wilson Delivered Hot Springs Keynote

By Steve Wilson

Steve Wilson, Director of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, not only gave the keynote address at this year's ACI conference in Hot Springs, but he stuck around and spent some time with us. His keynote speech addressed a subject near and dear to all of us the outdoors, the dwindling number of outdoor users, and most important, how we go about reaching our constituents. Following is an excerpted version of what Director Wilson had to say: Slowly, we've become a nation of stay-insides. Even when we do go outdoors, we insulate ourselves from nature with tinted glass, and drive around in our SUV's inside our little bubbles of filtered, refrigerated air. We hear all the time that the numbers of hunters and anglers in the United States are decreasing, but that's not exactly true. Our overall numbers are actually growing, but the catch is that we're not growing as fast as the population of the country. That means we're becoming weaker and weaker as a voting block, and that's why you see so much anti-hunting and anti-fishing legislation being passed these days. ...Let me throw a couple figures at you: Here in Arkansas, the population is slightly over two million. In the 97-98 Fiscal year, the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission sold 290,000 resident hunting licenses and 403,000 resident fishing licenses. This year's figures aren't in yet, but it looks like the numbers will be about the same. This doesn't include lifetime license holders and kids under 16, but it doesn't take a math whiz to see that hunters and anglers are a small fraction of the total population even in the state that bills itself as The Natural State. The situation is much the same nationwide. Keep these things in mind: 80 percent of Americans do not hunt; 96 percent of those who do are white; less than 10 percent who hunt are female. The percentages for fisherman are slightly more favorable, but only slightly. Keep this in mind, too: 75 percent of Americans live in urban areas; 51 percent are female; 25 percent are minorities. And there are as many television sets in the United States today as there are people. We're all aware of the problem, and we know the reasons by heart: the population shift from the country to the city; an increasing number of single-parent families, usually with a working mother as the parent; decreasing availability of public land and waters, and a corresponding increase in crowding on available areas; the escalating cost of equipment, gasoline, and other expenses such as licenses, hunting leases and boat rentals; the increasing competition from other recreational activities such as TV, computer games and spectator sports. All these things add up to a severe lack of role models to encourage kids to take up the outdoors as a hobby or a lifestyle, and when you don't expose a person to the pleasures of the out-of-doors when he or she is very young, chances are that person will never become an outdoor type. ...We've already largely lost a generation of potential supporters, and now we're in the process of losing their kids. This is sounding pretty gloomy so far, isn't it? Let's change tacks and start talking about ways to solve the problem. We all know recruitment is our biggest challenge. We have to get more people involved in the outdoor experience. How do we meet that challenge? How do we beat it? How do we get there from here? One important thing is, we have to keep up with the times. This is the computer age, and even though kids sitting in front of a screen with a joystick in their hands is one of our problems, we still have to join `em in order to win `em over. Computers and computer literacy is the wave of the future, and we can either ride the wave or get drowned by it. Computer technology is the light of the future. But seeing the light and feeling the heat are different things. It takes money to gear up for the age of information computers, internet linkage, software to connect us all together so we can benefit from all this new technology. It takes money, too, to learn how to use all this stuff once we get it. And it's preaching to the choir when I tell you that I&E departments in practically every conservation organization in the nation, state, federal or private, are both understaffed and underfunded. It's always been that way. It'll probably always be that way. There will never be enough money, or enough people, to do all the things we all know we need to do to protect the resource. That's why we have to look for more effective ways to communicate with the public. E-mail is one easy way we can improve communications. It's a wonderful tool for quick give-and-take. You don't have to go through all the formalities of writing a letter and addressing an envelope and stamping it and mailing it; you just say what needs to be said and punch "send". Most agencies have E-mail capability on their web sites, but few of us provide E-mail addresses at the end of our brochures or magazine articles or videos, for the convenience of readers and viewers who have questions, comments or suggestions. But this new technology isn't the solution, either, at least not yet. Here in Arkansas, we rank 49th in percentage of home Internet connections. Only about one in 20 Arkansas families currently has home Internet access. That percentage will increase, but for now, we have to look for additional ways to get the message out. That's where outreach comes in. We all agree we need to bring more supporters into the fold of wildlife and natural resource conservation, and in order to do that we have to educate more people through outreach programs. "Hooked on Fishing, Not On Drugs" is a new program in Arkansas, but it's becoming a very important tool to help us reach a user group we'd otherwise have almost no chance of reaching city kids who have no ties to the country. Fishing is as foreign to many of these kids as Chinese arithmetic, but HOFNOD is teaching them that fishing is fun. And, by extension, that the outdoors is a pretty neat place. Don't overlook the possibility to form partnerships with other conservation agencies or private companies. We have an excellent partnership in Arkansas with the Arkansas Game and Fish Foundation, a non-profit organization that helps us "get the word out." Don't forget, too, that we also need outreach to each other. Short budgets make for hard times, but they also create opportunities to network and cooperate with our fellow ditch-diggers. Share information among yourselves. Cooperate on issues of common interest. When you're starting a new I&E effort, pick the brains of your counterparts in other states who've had experience with similar programs, and profit from their experiences. When you hit on a program or a product that's effective in selling a message, tell your friends in other state agencies about it. So far I've been talking primarily about hunters and anglers as our power base, and until recent years, that's been appropriate. But now we need to broaden our efforts, to promote alternative uses of the outdoors. Bird-watching and wildlife viewing, hiking, canoeing, kayaking, camping these things and more. What we must do is cultivate more supporters of our activities, and to interest more people in the wonders of the outdoors. People tend to dislike or distrust those things they're unfamiliar with, and face it: most people today are unfamiliar with not only hunting and angling, but anything to do with the out-of-doors. They have no concept of the wonderful lifestyles outdoor activities lead to. There's the challenge. How do we get there from here? How do we cultivate support for all outdoor activities? We do it by promoting a wider diversity in what we've traditionally thought of as outdoor activities. Today, it's more than just the so-called "blood sports". If we don't play to those "soft user" audiences, we'll lose their support. If we lose their support, we're dead in the water. You all know Kay Ellerhoff. Kay is solidly in the electronic age. She was one of the first on-line users in the outdoor industry, back when she was editor of "Montana Outdoors." She can tell you some interesting, sometimes bloody stories about the history of the conservation education movement. But as high-tech as Kay has become, she's never lost sight of one important fact: no matter how high-tech the world gets, no matter how cyber-oriented we become, there's still no replacement for that good old-fashioned one-on-one contact between people. Kay is with the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation now, as editor of Wild Outdoor World magazine, the RMEF's publication for kids. Here's an example of how she combines high-tech with one-on-one contact: Several years ago, Kay and her cohorts at Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation twisted my arm late one night and now the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission is underwriting the cost of putting a subscription to W.O.W. in the hands of Arkansas fourth-graders. Last school year, 37,681 students in 524 schools received the magazine. We're planning similar numbers for this year. Has it worked? A survey of fourth-grade teachers showed that 94 percent of them believe it "has increased awareness and knowledge of wildlife, habitat and natural resource issues." That's at a cost of about a buck per kid per magazine pretty effective use of outreach dollars, if you ask me. A few months ago, I wrote the directors of all the other state wildlife agencies and encouraged them to sponsor W.O.W. in their public and private schools. We must, we MUST, teach kids about the value of wild things and wild places, whether or not they become hunters and anglers. If they don't have that knowledge, who are we going to have for constituents in 20 years? Getting more women involved in the outdoors is another of our pressing needs. We've made strides in that direction with programs like Becoming and Outdoor Woman and Women in the Outdoors, and the popularity and effectiveness of those programs is proven by the fact that every event is a sell-out, with a waiting list. But these programs don't go far enough. There's a lot of difference between a three-hour casting lesson and becoming a capable angler, or between learning how to operate a turkey call and calling in a real, live bird. For many of these women who are interested in the out-of-doors, there's no avenue for them to put into practice what they've learned. There's no mentoring program to help them carry their newly-acquired knowledge to the field. We need such a program badly. So here we stand, and there we need to be. Again: How do we get there? We get there through outreach programs such as W.O.W. magazine. We get there through extension-type programs such as 4-H, Project WILD and Project WET. We get there through those women's programs I just mentioned BOW and Women in the Outdoors. The Arkansas Game & Fish Commission supports every one of those efforts, both monetarily and hands-on. We get there by using Internet tools such as web pages, with connecting links to other sources of conservation information. We get there through scholarship programs such as those offered by Outdoor Writers Association of America and Southeast Outdoor Press Association. We get there by producing and effectively using videos, magazines, books and brochures. But most of all, we get there by working our fingers to the bone, and by never forgetting that one-on-one, face-to-face contact will always be out most effective tool in communicating the value of things natural, wild and free. It won't be easy, but we'll get there.