It’s ignored because it does not fit the narrative.

this 100%.

Africa is getting hammered with this but yet, its the Trophy Hunters fault that game animals are declining

It's all about money!

While it doesn't necessarily cause a reduction in habitat, fewer landowners wanting to lease their property for hunting creates the same impact on hunting opportunities.

or it creates more as landowners who have decided not to lease will have more family, friends and guests out to hunt that didn't get a chance to before due to the property being leased

I resemble that remark.

Only Dan can take a topic about a serious issue that affects all of us (habitat loss ) and try to spin it into a discussion about the evil landowners and the high cost of leasing

Habitat loss will plague us until the end. It may ebb and flow, but it will always march on. Even most hunters rarely give it a second thought.

In my job I constantly see tracts of land from 50 - 5000 acres bought by urban-dwellers and then basically razed to the ground with only a few big trees left, asphalt roads put in, and then landscaped like a huge lawn. Then the landowners will say, “You know, when we looked at this place and first moved here, we used to see deer, rabbits, foxes, and all sorts of animals. Now we don’t see them anymore!”

Of course, the inexorable growth of commercial use and subdivisions around every populated area is probably even more impactful.

It’s really sad, but I doubt it will change.

It would be interesting to see an overlay of DFW from 1990 and from 2020, to see how much it has taken.

I imagine it would shock us. Same with all the major cities.

Heck just get on google earth and change the dates.

A little over 300 acres next to me sold and has been divided up.

Here’s something that really put this issue into perspective for me:

When we bought our 10 acres it had a fallen-down old house on it that was built by the local doctor in the 1910s. He called it his “summer house” and his family used to entertain there and quail hunt the surrounding properties. His permanent house was in town. Folks still hunted the area where my place is for quail well up into the 1970s. Many old people around here said they always thought of the place as being “way out in the country”.

It is about 2 1/2 miles from my house to the courthouse in the heart of town. Takes me all of about 8 minutes to get to work. But back then with few cars, few people, and a slower pace of living it seemed like it was far away. The world was bigger then. It is small now. Anyone where I live can be in downtown Dallas in an hour or Houston in 3 1/2 hours by car, downtown New York in 5 hours or downtown London in 12 hours by plane.

In the 1970's I hunted several places within a 20 mile radius of Abilene. Small ranches and farms. Today that circle is filled with urban development. Housing developments on small tracts of a few acres. The deer have mostly moved on farther out o that circle, but the wild hogs g=have replaced some of them,

One of the places was nothing more than caliche rocks land, the owner ran a few head of cows but mostly goats and sheep back in the day. Not a money maker, a developer offered him a fortune for a small pasture. That created a huge demand for "Ranchitos",

Sport hunters are the only thing that will save habitat and protect wildlife. That is how it has always been and how it will always be. It is the origin of Boone and Crockett, and our national park system. Non hunters are too busy with their lives to see or care about what’s happening and anti hunters either don’t have or won’t spend the money to influence things positively. They just b!tch about it.

Hunters with deep pockets, and fewer opportunities, will drive up the price. When it is high enough that non-hunters can generate a steady and substantial income from their inheritance, it will slow development but won’t stop it because it’s all about money. We already know we can’t rely on unchecked government to protect our natural resources.

If we never see that day, well, we will probably be relegated to drawn archery hunts in and around subdivisions where deer related accident are highest. There are drawn hunts around St. Louis specifically for that.

Species that don’t adapt well to sprawl could be doomed.

But if Elon Musk is right, that will fix it, lol

I just wish it was common knowledge what anti hunting and humane society type non profits are spending their money on. Only hunters and pro-gun people understand what is happening.

I would be remiss if I didn't say I've thought how the switch to electric vehicles could create a negative impact on hunting opportunities due to how far you can drive on a single charge. And then you need a 220-volt charging source before a long return. Simply put, everyone could one day be hunting much closer to home.

All too often when a landowner decides to stop leasing their property the reason can be linked back to hunter behavior.

Agreed........but what does that have to do with habitat loss?

Look, a squirrel!

better look quick before he loses his home...

I know more people now that lease out their places than back in the 80/90s.

Despite this ridiculous "woke" period we're going through, most folks still like making babies. The babies grow up and, against what all the lefty loons say they should do, most don't want to live in a downtown apartment and ride public transportation.

That's why we're in this pickle.

Habitat loss is about money and progress.

The number of people wanting someone else to do something about habitat conservation and improvement is stunning. It sounds good to the masses till it’s time to pony up. Then the list of people doing meaningful habitat improvement and conservation gets damn short. Nothing is free.

Second is people buying small parcels of land and moving out of the city. Then making their place in the country look like a city park.

Third is economics that create much smaller margins for agriculture. Landowners are incentivized to put every possible acre in production to pay the bills at the expense of biodiversity. Then often resort to maximum yield practices to further increase productivity, further degrading biodiversity.

Case in point. Improved pastures and putting fragmented cover into production was the death knell for quail across much of the south. The guy with the improved pastures that require less acerage/animal and are too dense for quail to get around in, 9 times out of ten is going to lay blame on fire ants rather than considering giving up the revenue that modern maximum yield provides. On one hand we scream for cheap beef, food goods and building materials, then economically we cut the legs out from beneath the landowners. Meaningful financial incentives for implementing and maintaining multiple use practices are being defunded. Reducing CRP is one that comes to mind. There is no free lunch.

Today our population is dominated by city dwellers that have completely lost touch with nature. A prime example is modern deer hunters boiling out of the cities to hunt. Their answer is feeding protein and establishment of killing stations. That has become mainstream. The same money spent on habitat enhancement would yield lasting and greater results. The vast majority are not interested in anything more than what shows up at their killing station. The sole interest of most is the animals they can harvest. They don’t give a rip about habitat and have very little understanding about habitat or respect for the landowners or their property.

The cluelessness of the self absorbed me generation astounds me.