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Hunting and Conservation Go Hand in Hand
Ducks Unlimited’s Jerad Henson shares how hunters fund habitat protection.
© Mike Budd/USFWS
When waterfowl are in decline, hunters are some of the first people to sound the alarm — and fund their recovery. On the Bring Birds Back podcast, Ducks Unlimited project manager Jared Henson discusses the many ways that waterfowl hunters contribute both money and data towards wetland conservation.
Learn more in season 8 of Bring Birds Back, available in your favorite podcast app!
BirdNote®
Hunting And Conservation Go Hand In Hand
Written by Ariana Remmel
This is BirdNote.
[Mallard ducks]
When waterfowl are in decline, hunters are some of the first people to sound the alarm — and fund their recovery. Jared Henson is a project manager with Ducks Unlimited, a nonprofit hunting and conservation group.
Jerad Henson: The North American Model of Conservation puts the bulk of the responsibility to fund conservation on hunters because hunters in general are the consumptive users of those habitats and they're just in general more willing to give money to that cause.
That money not only comes from hunting license sales, but also taxes on gear.
Jerad Henson: So guns, ammo, binoculars, all those sporting goods that you would use for hunting, a portion of that tax goes to the states and they can then allocate that into conservation funding.
Financial support is just one way that hunters contribute to habitat management.
Jerad Henson: Waterfowl biologists and scientists have been leveraging hunters for data for almost a hundred years now. The big thing now is Avian Influenza. Hunters are some of the first to see the impacts of that in the field, especially since the main vector for it is waterfowl. And so hunters really play a big role in disease monitoring.
[Mallard ducks]
Learn more about how hunters support wildlife conservation in season 8 of Bring Birds Back. Available in your favorite podcast app and on our website BirdNote.org. I’m Jazzi Johnson.
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Senior Producer: Mark Bramhill
Producer: Sam Johnson
Managing Producer: Jazzi Johnson
Managing Producer: Ariana Remmel
Content Director: Jonese Franklin
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Mallard ML182248231 recorded by Aimee Lusty.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2026 BirdNote June 2026
Narrator: Jazzi Johnson
ID# PodBBB-48-2026-06-30 PodBBB-48
Jazzi Johnson
Narrator