Hunting and conservation are not opposites. Done right, they are partners.

Before agriculture, before cities, before written history, there was the hunt. For hundreds of thousands of years it was our species' primary source of sustenance — sharpening our senses, forging our instincts, and shaping what it means to be human. Hunting is not a modern pastime. It is one of the oldest bonds between people and the natural world.

Regulated, science-based hunting is linked to better conservation outcomes. A 2025 study published in Nature Sustainability, analyzing more than 1,600 terrestrial mammal species, found that species subject to regulated sport hunting were significantly less likely to be threatened — and more likely to have stable or increasing populations — according to the IUCN Red List.^[1] The reason is largely economic: regulated hunting gives financial value to conserving large tracts of wild habitat where few or no alternative funding sources exist.^[2]

The man remembered as America's greatest conservation president was himself a passionate big-game hunter. Theodore Roosevelt protected roughly 230 million acres of public land — national parks, forests, monuments, and the first federal wildlife refuges — and founded the national wildlife refuge system that endures today.^[6] The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History records it plainly: one of Roosevelt's great passions was hunting, and from it grew a conservation ethic that shaped a nation.^[6] For Roosevelt, the hunter and the conservationist were never in conflict — they were the same person.

In the United States, hunters are among the largest direct contributors to conservation in history. Through the Pittman-Robertson Act of 1937 — a tax that hunters and shooters placed upon themselves on firearms, ammunition, and equipment — more than $29 billion has been directed toward wildlife restoration and habitat protection. In 2024 alone, that fund delivered close to $1 billion to wildlife agencies across all 50 states.^[3]

This is not only an American story. CITES — the United Nations-backed Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, with 184 Parties — recognizes that legal, well-regulated, sustainable use of wildlife can support both the conservation of species and the livelihoods of the rural communities that live alongside them.^[4] The United Nations Environment Programme affirms the same: when conducted sustainably and well regulated, wildlife use often produces positive conservation outcomes by creating incentives to protect habitats and species.^[5]

For rural communities living alongside wildlife, regulated hunting is often the difference between protecting wild land and losing it. It creates jobs, funds village projects, and gives local people a direct economic reason to conserve habitat rather than convert it to farmland — exactly the incentive the United Nations Environment Programme identifies as central to positive conservation outcomes.^[5] And the harvest feeds people: when southern Africa faced its worst drought in decades, the governments of Namibia and Zimbabwe authorized regulated culls and distributed the meat to communities facing food insecurity. In Namibia alone, the first phase yielded more than 56,800 kilograms of meat for drought-relief programs — at a time when, according to the United Nations, nearly half the country faced high levels of food insecurity.^[7] Nothing is wasted: the meat feeds families, and the proceeds return to conservation.

We will be clear: the benefit is not automatic. The science is firm that hunting supports conservation when it is regulated, grounded in reliable population data, and shares its benefits with local communities. Poaching is not hunting. Overexploitation is not hunting. What we stand for is ethical, legal, sustainable hunting — the only kind that deserves the name.