Celebrating our great American outdoors
Published 8:00 am Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Georgia’s Gov. Sonny Perdue recently signed a proclamation in honor of the conservation efforts that are led by America’s anglers and hunters by recognizing this past Saturday, Sept. 26 as NHFD in Georgia.
Many Georgians celebrated that day along with the rest of the country in recognizing the truly American traditions of hunting and fishing that have existed since the Colonial days.
This annual celebration has created a better public awareness of the important role that outdoorsmen and outdoorswomen have played in conservation and improvement of our national resources. President Theodore Roosevelt was an avid hunter and angler and was one of those early conservationists who influenced many of our fish and game laws today.
The U.S. Congress and Pres. Richard Nixon established NHFD 37 years ago to recognize generations of anglers and hunters for the more than a billion dollars that they donate to wildlife conservation each year.
The preservation of the nation’s precious natural resources and the great American traditions of hunting and fishing are being challenged everyday by the changing world in which we live. Millions of America’s hunters and anglers work each day to conserve, repair and improve our country’s great natural resources.
It has taken decades for wildlife like whitetail deer, wood ducks and wild turkey to recover from early exploitation. Hunters and anglers are greatly responsible for those wildlife restoration success stories.
The United States Fish and Wildlife Service conducts the National Survey of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife Associated Recreation every five years to measure the importance of wildlife based recreation to the American people. The survey collects information on the number of anglers, hunters and wildlife watchers; how often they participate; and how much they spend on those activities in the United States. The latest survey in 2006 indicated that 87.5 million Americans spent more than $122 billion in 2006 on wildlife related recreation.
The 2006 survey indicated that there were 971,000 Georgia anglers, 344,000 Georgia hunters and 1.8 million Georgia wildlife watchers. Those three groups of Georgia residents spent over $2.4 billion in 2006 in the state of Georgia on the cost of those activities. Nonresidents spent an additional $838 million on those same activities in Georgia. That represents a grand total of over $3.3 billion spent on wildlife related activities in Georgia.
More than 87 million Americans including 30 million anglers and 12.5 million hunters participated in wildlife related recreation in 2006. The total expenditures on those activities were over $122 billion. Those figures go to show the love for the outdoors tradition that anglers and hunters have in the United States.
The survey also indicates that in the 6- to 15 year-olds, 1.6 million hunted, 8.3 million fished and 12 million participated in wildlife watching. Those numbers are encouraging when so many things today draw the attention of our youth. Recreation alone could have a tremendous impact on health issues that affect today’s youth. Obesity, heart disease and diabetes are a growing problem in our country and many are related to inactivity.
It is important to get our children involved in outdoor activities to help ensure a bright future for hunting, fishing and other outdoor activities but we also should remember the past conservation efforts and achievements of American outdoorsmen and outdoorswomen. For additional information about the NFHD, visit the NHFD Web site at www.nhfd.org. Another NHFD has come and gone but we really need to celebrate the great American outdoors and the traditions of hunting and fishing throughout the entire year. See you next week.
Outdoors columnist Bobby Peoples can be reached via e-mail at brpeoples@windstream.net.