I had the pleasure today of interviewing Paul Schmidt, the Chief Conservation Officer for Ducks Unlimited, Inc. While Americans are joining traditional associations at lower rates, Ducks Unlimited has a steadily growing base of roughly one million supporters and volunteers, including an increasing number of younger people, some of whom enter through Facebook. (Ducks Unlimited has more than 1 million Facebook “likes”.)<\/p>\n
Schmidt explained that civic engagement is crucial to the conservation movement. Ducks Unlimited does not own or manage much land on which waterfowl live. Instead, the organization tries to influence landowners to be good stewards of their land. These owners may be agencies but often are regular citizens. Influencing them is \u201cnot a manipulation,\u201d Schmidt added; it is genuine engagement that changes behavior.<\/p>\n
In general, Schmidt thought, the “need and desire for affiliation has eroded.\u201d This trend (documented in “Bowling Alone”) is bad for the conservation movement because \u201cbelonging and partnering are key elements \u2026 to conservation.\u201d<\/p>\n
But duck hunters form strong bonds. It is a “unique recreational pursuit” in that sense, different from deer hunting. I asked what turns the social<\/em> bond of hunting into associational membership<\/em>, since the social bond of bowling doesn\u2019t seem to produce bowling leagues any more. Schmidt was not sure, but he thought that for many hunters, the real goal is to appreciate nature together. A classic experience is watching the dawn break over a pond with friends. \u201cWe capitalize on the experience,” Schmidt told me. People who appreciate nature together can be activated to protect it, whether that is through their stewardship of their private land, voluntary cooperation and collaboration, influencing other people, or supporting policies. \u201cThey will do what it takes to make sure [the view] doesn\u2019t get bulldozed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I had the pleasure today of interviewing Paul Schmidt, the Chief Conservation Officer for Ducks Unlimited, Inc. While Americans are joining traditional associations at lower rates, Ducks Unlimited has a steadily growing base of roughly one million supporters and volunteers, including an increasing number of younger people, some of whom enter through Facebook. (Ducks Unlimited […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14895"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14904,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14895\/revisions\/14904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}