RELOADED EP81: Using Research to Understand Waterfowl Hunter Dynamics
Welcome to the Ducks Unlimited Podcast, RELOADED, where we bring you the best of our past episodes. Whether you're a seasoned waterfowler or curious about conservation, this series is for you. Over the years, we've had incredible guests and discussions about everything from wetland conservation to the latest waterfowl research and hunting strategies. In RELOADED, we're revisiting those conversations to keep the passion alive and the mission strong. So sit back, relax, and enjoy this reload.
Mike Brasher:On this episode of the podcast, we're gonna be revisiting a topic that we introduced a few weeks back. Listeners of the show will remember that we had Dale Hamburg on to talk about the North American Waterfowl Management Plan and joint ventures, and importantly, part of that in the latest update to the NAWAMP was the recognition of the need to explicitly account for people in the way we manage habitats and some of the decisions that we make and the role social science is helping us, the role that social science is playing in helping us understand some of those important topics. And so today, have first time ever, we have three in studio special guests to help us with this. We're welcoming back former chief scientist, Dale Hamburg. We also have joining us from the University of Nebraska, Doctor Chris Chisznski, Associate Professor of Human Dimensions of Wildlife, and his graduate student, Katherine Graham, a PhD student.
Mike Brasher:So Dale, welcome to the show.
Dale Hamburg:How are doing, Mike?
Mike Brasher:Doing well. Chris?
Dr. Chris Chisznski:How are doing?
Mike Brasher:Good. And Katherine. Hello. Thanks for joining us. This morning and early part of this afternoon, we had some discussions here in the building.
Mike Brasher:Had a meeting with Chris and Katherine about some of the work that they're conducting, and we saw this would be a great opportunity to welcome to them to the podcast and explore this topic in a bit more detail. Okay. So, Chris, I think we'll start with you. And what we want probably the best place to start is for you to talk a bit about what you do. What you do, and I introduced you as a professor of human dimensions.
Mike Brasher:And so for our audience, probably a logical place to begin is to just explain what we mean when we say human dimensions of wildlife.
Dr. Chris Chisznski:So when we talk about managing wildlife, we talk about three different components. We talk about the biota, the animals that are out there in the landscape, we talk about the habitat, so the area that that organism lands or lives, and then the human users that are tied to that. And Human Dimensions focuses in on those human users and in particular how they interact with wildlife. So we look at feedbacks between wildlife populations and people, and then how people interact with the habitat, but also a lot of other things that are tied specifically to people. So their belief systems, their values, their attitudes, how they are affected by wildlife management decisions, how wildlife management decisions affect them, all of those kind of things.
Dr. Chris Chisznski:So human dimensions, it's wide field, incorporates a lot of different social sciences, but really focuses on the study of how people interact with natural resources, fisheries and wildlife in this case.
Mike Brasher:I graduated with my bachelor's in 1998, and I think it was right about that time that this field of human dimensions was really starting to grow. Whenever I first signed up for school at Mississippi State, working with people was one of the last things on my mind whenever I made that decision to enroll, but it became very apparent as went through that program that we manage wildlife resources primarily for people, for their appreciation, for their use. And so Dale, I wanna talk to you right now because you are among these four. You're the most seasoned of us. I won't ask you to disclose when you graduated with your degrees, thinking back to those days when you were in school, did you sign up for wildlife ecology, that program, basically with the same thinking that I did and that, hey, you're interested in animals, you wanna hunt, you wanna fish, and then but then as you got in it, you started to see how important it is to to to recognize the why we're doing it and the connection to people?
Dale Hamburg:Certainly, Mike. I think most of us in wildlife initially, at least in that era, got started because we liked the outdoors, we liked to hunt and fish, that tradition traditional trajectory of our profession. I think the eye opener came for me when I started working for an agency. I worked initially in Iowa and then with the Missouri Department of Conservation and it didn't take very long at all to discover that what we were doing, although we like to have animals as the primary target of our work and so on, was really for the people of the state. And if we didn't do a good job managing the habitat, didn't do a good job of managing the critters themselves, folks weren't gonna be very happy.
Dale Hamburg:The phone was gonna ring and we were gonna have some administrators not very happy. And so the longer I was involved, the more obvious it became that we had three key tiers as Chris mentioned earlier, habitat, the critters themselves, and the people that benefit both from the birds and the habitat.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. And I would I would say that we had, up until recently, we had focused most of our science and experimentation on the animals and their habitats, yet we were still making decisions about how to manage those populations and manage those habitats based on assumptions of the other piece, the people, and how they interact with and how they use it and what's important to it. So Katherine and I come along at a time when that field, the social sciences, is really starting to explode within wildlife arena, and that's where this era of human dimensions comes into play. So Katherine, when you enrolled, well, guess I should I should ask for my own personal clarification. When you enrolled for your bachelor's, was that a wildlife program or was it more of a social science background?
Katherine Graham:It was actually social science. So I got my bachelor's in political science Okay. With did some sociology work, but was always interested in wildlife but didn't really see, you know, where that career where I'd end up. But yeah, I got involved in political science and then realized I don't want to be working with politics the rest of my life. So kinda got back to what I'm really interested in and realized that there's a whole field kinda getting started with social science, but also working doing good things for wildlife and working with people that are also interested in wildlife.
Katherine Graham:So that's kinda how that came about.
Mike Brasher:And so you are enrolled in in what department at the University of Nebraska?
Katherine Graham:So I'm School of Natural Resources. Now I am so in human dimensions, but in the whole wildlife school of natural resources. So kind of a jump from political science, but
Mike Brasher:It's it's very neat just sort of looking back through the years of how, you know, traditional wildlife programs at universities, the the the academicians, the professors in those positions were pretty much all habitat or population species specialists. But now we have all three sciences represented, which is actually really cool, and I think it's why we're starting to make some great strides in understanding those connections. And, of course, the next step is in figuring out how we can apply that science, what we learn from that science, about what motivates people and how they interact with the species and the habitats. And so that's part of what we're here to discuss today and some of the work that you, Katherine, and Chris are conducting in partnership with Ducks Unlimited and others. So, Chris, I guess picking back up where we were, you've sort of defined human dimensions, and that's your area of specialty, so maybe if you could give a few examples of the type of work that you actually do in your lab and some of your students.
Dr. Chris Chisznski:Yeah, so we do quite a bit of quite a range of human dimensions research. A lot of it does focus more on the hunting and fishing arenas. Katherine's study there is modeling behavior of waterfall hunters or conservationist behavior, how often they are participating, what influences their participation. We've also sent out some very large surveys out to the Central and Mississippi Flyway Surveys asking and looking at what is preventing people from participating in waterfowl hunting in particular, but a lot of different hunting activities. And we've also investigated the influence of private land hunting or private lands on the hunting of elk in Nebraska, really because Nebraska's 97% privately owned.
Dr. Chris Chisznski:Elk are public good. Where are people going to hunt these elk? Are they paying trespass fees? All of those kind of things. Some kind of nontraditional stuff that we have working on right now, we actually have a graduate student in my lab that's looking at motivations and barriers to gatherers.
Dr. Chris Chisznski:So mushroom hunters and berry pickers, all of those kind of things, understanding why people do it in the Midwest. It's a really popular thing out in the coasts, but not so much is known about people here in the Midwest. So that's another kind of nontraditional route that we've been looking at, some of the uses of natural resources.
Mike Brasher:We'll probably get into this in a bit more detail as we go forward in this conversation, but Dale, I wanna come back to you and revisit our conversation from a couple of weeks ago. So Chris has mentioned some of their work to better understand motivations for participation and engagement and behaviors. When we had you on in the previous episode, we were talking about the NAWAM and the inclusion in the new update to be explicit about acknowledging the needs of people. And so just revisit for us why that's important from a waterfowl hunter standpoint. We could extend this to anglers hunters of other types, but of course, our interest here is waterfowl.
Mike Brasher:So just revisit that and remind us of why is it important to understand what motivates hunters and to keep hunters engaged and active. And what are we seeing right now with hunter numbers?
Dale Hamburg:The role that hunters play as conservationists is something that was assumed historically. We always figured that if we manage the habitat, provided a place for the birds, and provided a place for the hunters ultimately, we'd be successful. But we didn't pay a lot of attention to what were the motivations and barriers and incentives and how do individuals or groups negotiate those obstacles and so on. And so with that in mind, the North American plan as we develop the more recent iterations, they acknowledged that we could no longer just assume what was driving people and their involvement and so on. With declining numbers of hunters, obviously, the support base that they provided historically and hopefully occurs in the future, was gonna erode.
Dale Hamburg:And if we didn't understand the people that were supporting what's important to all of us, we weren't gonna be successful. Recognize that the rate at which society is changing is more rapid than our ability to keep up in some instances. And so if we had not explicitly acknowledged that that was going to be important going forward, I think we'd have been left in the in the wildlife management dark ages pretty quickly. And so, I think that's the primary motivation. The degree to which that's changed is something that perhaps we're even a bit behind the curve yet on.
Dale Hamburg:The as I said, the the rate of change is occurring so quickly that we as a profession owe it to ourselves to keep up. That's where folks like Chris and Katherine and others come into play is that historically, when we thought about human dimensions, we simply said, well, let's do a survey. Well, we are so far beyond just doing a survey these days with regard to social sciences and are treating it more as an explicit and rigorous form of science than we did historically. So those changes I think are most significant going forward.
Mike Brasher:Chris, I'll come to you now. In our discussion this morning, this always comes up as one of the key reasons why we're even engaging here and Dale has referenced it here, but the degree to which waterfowl hunters have declined across North America. Dale was referencing just a little while ago got on the show here. Back in the sixties, I think maybe it was 2,500,000 waterfowl hunters, but now we've seen some long term significant declines. Do you have some numbers of what we've seen in terms of declines based on some of your
Dr. Chris Chisznski:The last numbers I have were somewhere under just under a million waterfowl hunters.
Mike Brasher:So we've gone from 2,500,000 roughly in the sixties to less than a million now. And of course, I'm sure there are a lot of people thinking out there listening and thinking, holy cow. I I mean, it's it's tough to find places to hunt right now without without a lot of competition. I can't imagine what it would have been like with 2,500,000, and that's another conversation we could talk about in-depth, you know, why how all of that has changed, but we'll save that for another time.
Dr. Chris Chisznski:Well, I was gonna say, with with that loss though, there's there's a lot of concerns, right, because of what waterfowl hunters contribute to management of wildlife and management of waterfowl in particular, right? Every hunter that goes out there is purchasing firearms and shotgun shells that have the Pitman Robertson excise tax that comes up and goes to the federal government that is then given back to the states to provide waterfall management. Each state, but a lot of states have a state waterfall stamp. There is also the federal waterfowl stamp that goes directly to conservation funding. So with these decreases in numbers of hunters, we're losing this money that is currently being used to management or manage wildlife and wetlands conservation.
Dr. Chris Chisznski:And if we don't find another to bring up hunters, ways to bring up hunters or keep hunters where they are at now, we're gonna be hurting for money to help manage these things. And in addition, we potentially could lose the culture tied to waterfowl hunting. It's an important culture, one that's celebrated here at Ducks Unlimited. The political pull that has on those things to help making sure that we have conservation of some of our natural resources. It's an important waterfowl control tool, management tool for things like overpopulation of snow geese and those kind of things, Canada geese.
Dr. Chris Chisznski:And then lastly, without all those fundings, that conservation dollars going towards wetlands, we lose a lot of the ecosystem services that come with and the benefits of having wetlands.
Mike Brasher:The political support that hunters provide, it's probably impossible to overstate the importance of that. And oftentimes, because hunters, conservationists are willing to voice their concerns to their politicians either through letter or phone call or whatever the case may be or through voting, that many times will translate into a greater amount of resources, you know, through some sort of like, the Farm Bill is a great example, and and they build the the degree to which conservationists speak out in support of the programs within that within that that piece of legislation is really, really important. And so it's not just the direct contributions that the individual hunters or conservationists make out of their own pocket, but it's their political influence as well as you talked about. So let's move now to a discussion of what you've learned with respect to motivations for hunting and and then barriers or to to hunting. And so what so either Chris, you or Katherine probably in a good position to to address that.
Katherine Graham:So we've done work focused on Waterfowl Hunters for motivations. Well, really all big game, small game. And then I also did a side project actually looking at motivations of anglers in Nebraska. And really, no matter your outdoor recreation of choice, you're really motivated by getting outside, being in nature, appreciating wildlife. And then second to that is just getting out there with people who care about wildlife like you do, your friends and your family.
Katherine Graham:That's really what's driving really any person choosing to get out there and get outside, which has a lot of opportunity to get people to try other activities. So, say our small game hunters who, you know, love getting out there and seeing birds, there's plenty of opportunity to try other, say, waterfowl hunting, where you also have that. And also that social aspect of getting out with your friends and going out in the morning and doing all that good stuff. So I really see a lot of similarities when it comes to what gets people outside and what gets them excited at participating.
Mike Brasher:Does does that tend to vary geographically or demographically or how does all that break down?
Dr. Chris Chisznski:We tend to see in a study that one of my previous graduate students did, Matt Heinrichs, he looked at that geographically and we saw very little difference between a waterfowl hunter in Montana to one in Oklahoma or Michigan. They tended to all have similar motivations. The same thing as Katherine just said, an angler has very similar motivations to getting out and participating as a waterfall hunter. One of the minor differences that we do see is that we do tend to see things like big game hunters being more motivated by trophy or filling your freezer is the big thing. So the degree that which people want to consume the prey varies a little bit more.
Dr. Chris Chisznski:But why they actually the main reasons they do it is, as Katherine said, to get outside and be with people.
Mike Brasher:And then also barriers to entry. What are we seeing and what are we hearing in terms of that? Because done a, y'all done a host of surveys and there are a host of surveys that have been conducted just sort of across North America to begin to address these questions. But what's what show up as some of the key barriers to to participation?
Katherine Graham:So overwhelmingly, the biggest thing that we've come across is access. So access to the resource, just places public land, places to go, places that are close to home, so you're not driving, you know, eight hours. That's no matter your hunting group or even anglers who have never participated in hunting, they perceive that as something that's keeping them back. So yeah, any group somewhere to go is the biggest thing holding people back.
Dr. Chris Chisznski:And tied with that though, in a place, especially like Nebraska that's 97 privately owned, that the either the actual the realized constraint or the actual perceived constraint of that you have to pay a lot of money to access private property is another barrier that holds people back. And whether it actually occurs or not, it is a big mental hurdle that people have to to try to figure out.
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Mike Brasher:So Dale, prior to coming to Ducks Unlimited, you worked for the Missouri Department of Conservation and I know y'all were at the forefront of some of this thinking with respect to how can we how can we actively manage for better experiences, better opportunity for our waterfowl hunters. At what point in your career did these discussions occur? Did you all conduct surveys to gather this type of feedback from hunters? And did y'all even back in those days, did you did access come up as something that was important? Did that and did that lead y'all to certain just any of the management actions that you put into place?
Dale Hamburg:Missouri, like a number of Midwestern states driven by agriculture, had seen a dramatic loss of wetlands historically. So right away, we started behind the curve, mind you. We'd lost 90% of the historical wetland habitat base. So very early on, some pretty forward thinking individuals determined that if we were going to be successful, we needed to manage for quality experiences. One of the early managers in Missouri stated that we wanted to have public areas that were just as good of hunting as any private hunting opportunity in the state.
Dale Hamburg:And that kinda set the tone for how people looked at private versus public land management. With that in mind, there was emphasis oh, goodness gracious. Late fifties or earlier on providing quality hunting opportunity. They limited the number of hunters per party, the number of hunters per area if you will, on average a party per 40 acres roughly is kind of the thought process given, quality habitat, access to those hunting opportunities, with equal emphasis on the birds themselves with an eye towards seeing birds is at least as important as the opportunity to shoot birds. The opportunity to shoot is more important than actually taking birds home.
Dale Hamburg:You know, I had an opportunity and I saw a bunch of birds, if I didn't get one, it's my fault. And so those were key elements throughout. As we developed more recent management planning, there was an emphasis on opportunity close to people. When we developed a wetland management plans in the late 80s and through 2000s, There was emphasis on places close to Kansas City, St. Louis, Springfield, other areas with population centers.
Dale Hamburg:Recent surveys indicated that travel within about an hour, about 60 miles or so, was pretty necessary if you were gonna meet perceived barriers of access and all. So, yeah, it was just front and center, and it's been that case for sixty plus years.
Mike Brasher:Have you all gone back and looked to see if the response that you thought materialized actually did? Have you repeated those surveys? Were you on target with the actions? And I mean, if so, that's good. But if not, did you adjust?
Dale Hamburg:The credit I'd have to say is to some folks that were actually doing human dimensions work in the mid seventies, where some of the earlier efforts on just initially surveys to determine, you know, what people were looking for in an experience and that type of thing. We did the initial waterfowl hunter survey, you know, a complete survey at least representative of Missouri waterfowl hunters was done in the mid eighties. Repeated that about every five years since. And to the credit to Andy Radicke, who's the current waterfowl biologist in Missouri, who incidentally has a wildlife degree and a PhD in rural sociology. So you talk about combining the the skill sets needed to manage waterfowl and wildlife in this day and age, he's probably as good an example as there is.
Dale Hamburg:And so given those repeated surveys, it enabled us to track whether or not things have changed over time, the degree to which the programs that we put in place were indeed successful, and gave us a hint as to how would we change them. Given survey information, there's a need for us to then respond to changes that have occurred over time.
Mike Brasher:I think the point that I'm trying to help us make here, and that I think we're all trying to make, is that just as we have studied and continue to study the ecology, biology of waterfowl and their habitats, and we apply that to the actions on the ground to improve habitats, restore habitats, enhance habitats to achieve a certain population outcome for waterfowl, so too are we doing that for the people. We are conducting surveys to hear what the preferences, what the motivations are of the hunters, of our constituents, and increasingly states are trying to actually implement actions that align with those motivations and what our hunters and what our constituents are telling us. So I think that's one of the key messages that we wanna make sure we're getting out there is that we continue to study the biology of the critters, but we also, the same is true for the people. So that's a very good thing.
Dr. Chris Chisznski:And tying into that, we've been conducting a satisfaction survey in the Central Flyway in my lab from Montana all the way down to Texas, asking every year, trying to get a more frequent basis on what are some of the things that waterfowl hunters in the Central Flyway are expecting from their waterfowl season and how that's affecting satisfaction. And tying right into what Dale said, we've really found that things like seeing ducks is one of the most important things to duck hunters. They want to see ducks. If they don't see ducks, they tend to be dissatisfied. They want to have the opportunity to shoot.
Dr. Chris Chisznski:It doesn't necessarily mean hitting the duck, they want to be able to fire their gun is another thing that really ties into satisfaction. Then kind of down on the other side, they have lower expectations to fill their bag limits on any given day out in the field, But when it happens, duck hunters are really satisfied and makes their day, makes their trip. So that's a very consistent thing we see across the Central Flyway as well.
Mike Brasher:I want to move now to a developing, I don't know if you'd call it a movement, an initiative, and it's referred to within our field as R3. So Katherine, I'll get you to explain. When we say R3, what are we talking about?
Katherine Graham:So when we say r three in this context, we're talking about recruiting new hunters, retaining the hunters we have, so keeping these people engaged and then reactivating individuals who have fallen out over the years. So who used to participate, but just haven't had the time or whatever it may be that's kept them out of the out of the game for a while.
Mike Brasher:So we're recognizing that not all hunters or not all prospective hunters or conservationists, I guess hunters, we can just stick with that for the purpose of this conversation, are the same. We have we have people that are not hunters at all. That's where the recruitment comes in. Right? Where we're trying to get get new hunters, you know.
Mike Brasher:And so then we're retaining existing hunters and reactivation and are do we think about those three groups of people the same?
Katherine Graham:No. We really think we there's a lot of planning and that approach that goes into these different groups. So new individuals, we first got to think about how to even get them thinking about participating if that's something they've even ever considered before. Individuals who are already participating, that's when these satisfaction surveys come into play, really making sure that because as we do manage wildlife for the public, making sure that the public is getting what they want. So not forgetting about the hunters who are already out there, already funding our conservation, putting in all the hard work.
Katherine Graham:And then individuals who don't participate anymore, just really focusing on what we can do to get them back in the field. So sometimes maybe they're just getting older, they can't get out, you know, that kind of thing. So there's not much we can do for that. But if it's nowhere to go, maybe we can work on access like some states have done. If it's maybe they don't have the equipment, we can do like Nebraska, you can rent decoys and all sorts of different things from, the outdoor education center.
Katherine Graham:So making sure those resources are there to get people back in who we've lost for some reason or another.
Mike Brasher:And you just completed your master's degree and you're starting your PhD now. And your master's work actually helped us understand a bit more about waterfowl hunters in this realm of reactivation, recruitment, retention. So I think I'd like to talk a bit about that. So I guess at a high level, maybe share I know from the conversation this morning, one of the most fascinating things that I learned was, number one, what you call the churn rate. Explain that phenomenon whenever I introduce that.
Mike Brasher:So explain what I really mean when I say churn rate. What what are we talking about? What did you find? What was the neat aspect of your study there?
Katherine Graham:Right. So in addition to this decreasing active participation, we're also seeing what you're calling high churn And that really refers to the rate of individuals who are purchasing in one year but then not purchasing in the next. So when we have high churn, we see a lot of individuals who say purchase a license in one year, but then the next year for whatever reason they can't purchase and then maybe a few years down the line, they do purchase again, but we're not seeing like avid continuous participation from year to year.
Mike Brasher:So what did we learn with respect to the the pattern of participation among hunters on on in you know, over time? Do do hunters do we see hunters participate every single year or during a given year, what do we know about the level of participation relative to any of those that have participated over some length of time?
Katherine Graham:Right. So there is kind of diversity in who is participating every year. We do have those individuals who purchase every year, who are always getting out in the field, are real avid groups, but that's not most of our waterfowl hunters. Mostly, we see our more sporadic individuals who, you know, get out every other year, every few years and these are individuals that when we say churn are churning out. So they're buying in one year, but then the next year they don't have time, whatever it is, they don't buy the next, but may buy in the future.
Katherine Graham:And that's really what our population is mostly made up of up of. We do have a big core group of really go getters that are going every year, but that's that's not the majority of participants.
Mike Brasher:So when we looked over, let's say, a ten year period, the number of participants that we number of unique participants that we have and then compare that to the number of participants on an annual basis. What's that percentage? Is it about 20%? Right.
Katherine Graham:So yeah. In any given year, about 20% of the total hunters was how many were buying in that year.
Mike Brasher:Wow. So that means there could be if everyone that had been a hunter in the past ten years was a hunter next year, it would be five times the number that we had. Yes. Roughly speaking. That's a lot.
Katherine Graham:Right. Which is we shouldn't expect all those people to go every year, but
Mike Brasher:Yeah. Because there are a lot of different motivations for people to hunt. A lot of folks may have just been like like this happens to me often. I have friends that live in different locations all across the country in the job that I have, and I'll go visit them or I'll be in the area for a meeting or something. They'll invite me to stay over for an extra day or two to hunt.
Mike Brasher:So I'll hunt that that year in that state. Maybe the last time I ever hunt in that state. So I'm sure there's a small percentage of those that also show up in there. But I would nevertheless, I would be within among the participants there for waterfowl hunting in that state.
Dr. Chris Chisznski:I think tying into all of that too is that even though you're not participating every year, a lot of these people do identify as a waterfowl hunter or a waterfowl conservationist. A license purchase during any given year does not mean that you do not identify as a waterfowl hunter. And I think that's an important part of this thing. And it's the same thing with DU members, right? You may not purchase your membership every year, but you identify as a waterfowl conservationist.
Mike Brasher:What are we seeing with respect to demographics among waterfowl hunters? I'm mainly thinking male female. That was one of the interesting thing that jumped out to me with respect to recruitment rate among women was higher than it was for men, and that's a really encouraging and exciting thing. I know Mallory Murphy here in our national headquarters has worked with some of our sponsors on their women's only line of hunting gear, and so that's just a very exciting area right now, I think, in the entire Waterfowl community. What did you how did that shake out in your research?
Mike Brasher:What were you seeing with respect to men and women?
Katherine Graham:So like we'd expect, we did see for retention and continued participation, we did see that males were higher in that regard. But in the states that I studied and really in hunting in general, if you look at other research, the proportion of women in the hunting population is growing, which is super encouraging. And especially when you look at just women in general to previous years, we are seeing more people get involved, and starting to participate more actively from one year to the next, which like you said, is super encouraging.
Dr. Chris Chisznski:And tying into that, the younger women too, think, right?
Katherine Graham:Right. Like college age, like we were talking about earlier. Yeah, this my age people, college age individuals, are really stepping in and getting involved and enjoying it.
Mike Brasher:And that's really important when we think about the generation that we're losing, the baby boomers. They're the ones that we're seeing fade from our from our hunter hunter population, our our member population. And that's a large segment of society. And so it's gonna take men, women, all demographics to replace the support, the political and financial support that those people brought to our efforts. So I think it's really exciting and it's really important also.
Dale Hamburg:Chris, I'm interested, your background and responsibilities and profession these days is look ten years down the road, look at the rate at which society is changing and what are those things that we really need to be aware of? You mentioned a minute ago the fact that the baby boomers and the age structure of the people in support of waterfowl conservation is changing. So what are the challenges going forward?
Dr. Chris Chisznski:So as we mentioned a little bit before that the primary waterfowl hunters are older white males, and they are aging out of the ability to go out and hunt waterfowl. With this, and you hear this on the news all the time about the changing demographics in The United States, that people of color are increasing in proportion. And so when we're thinking about recruiting and bringing in new anglers, we need to think about opening up our audience a bit more, reaching out to some of these different groups that may not have necessarily been part of waterfowl hunting in the past. And this can be a little difficult. Some of these groups don't have necessarily the previous culture tied to waterfowl hunting or hunting in general.
Dr. Chris Chisznski:So trying to reach out and embrace some of these differences, trying out some new things to get people involved, I think is gonna be absolutely important.
Dale Hamburg:Katherine mentioned earlier today that the the the whole idea of social habitat. And so if we think about social habitat and the way we think of waterfowl habitat, then what are the key elements that are gonna be needed going forward? You know, ducks need a place to nest. They need a place to migrate. They need a they need a food source to fuel their migration.
Dale Hamburg:What's gonna be necessary for us to fuel waterfowl conservationists in the future? What form will that take? And we've seen the landscape change with regard to waterfowl. The social landscape has changed as well. So we need to be as quick on our feet going forward thinking about how does that social structure in support of waterfowl conservation going to change going forward?
Dale Hamburg:And so I think we all share that responsibility in terms of academic understanding, in terms of advocacy for that social framework and so on. And so how do we as individuals make sure that that that social habitat emerges and grows going forward?
Dr. Chris Chisznski:And provides a space for a large group of people and a diverse group of people.
Dale Hamburg:With regard to that whole notion of social habitat, DU is so well positioned as our other conservation organizations. You know, when you think of Wild Turkey Federation and others of the same thing, they provide that social habitat where people of the same mind, they have the same concerns can in fact play a role going forward of establishing that social environment of that's welcoming, that's engaging, and and I think we have an opportunity in DU to play that role going forward.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. I definitely think so and it's it's exciting having to see the evolution of how we're incorporating social science into the work that we do, whether it be within Ducks Unlimited, whether it be within the wildlife profession at large and whether it be driving our habitat conservation actions to ensure that what we're doing on the ground is good for the birds as well as good for the people. Access learning that access is one of the primary barriers to to entry to hunting for a lot of people. We can use that to inform some of the actions that we're doing, but also when we're just talking about the social habitat and the growing the the constituent base that that we need to continue to support our habitat efforts and support waterfowl population. I it's all really well, I know it's all really important, and it's just exciting to be able to apply some of the science that you and the human dimension social sciences field are bringing to this.
Mike Brasher:And so thank you for taking the time to join us today. Today, Dale, Chris, Katherine, thank you all so much for being here and thanks for joining us on the show. Thank you.
Dale Hamburg:Thanks for having us.
Katherine Graham:Yeah. Thanks.
Mike Brasher:Special thanks to our guest on today's show. In studio, we had joining us former chief scientist, Dale Humberg. We also had associate professor from University of Nebraska, Chris Chaczynski, and his PhD student, Katherine Graham. We appreciate their insights on a very important topic. We also thank, as always, our producer, Clay Baird, the for great job he does with the podcast and getting them out to you, our listeners.
Mike Brasher:And to you, our listeners, we thank you for tuning in and spending your time with us, and most importantly, for your support, passion, and commitment to wetlands and waterfowl conservation.
VO:Thank you for listening to the DU Podcast, proudly sponsored by Bird Dog Whiskey and Cocktails. Whether you're winding down with your best friend or celebrating with your favorite crew, Bird Dog brings award winning flavor to every moment. Enjoy responsibly. Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show and visit ducks.org/dupodcast. Opinions expressed by guests do not necessarily reflect those of Ducks Unlimited.
VO:Until next time, stay tuned to the Ducks.
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