A way to protect public lands and improve hunting opportunity?

If I told you there was a way to increase opportunity as a whole for hunters, have a larger seat at the conservation table, have an irrefutable voice as the major stake holders of wildlife policy, add another vail of protection from anti-hunting and fishing initiatives, have more animals on the landscape, have improved fisheries, healthier habitat all while protecting public lands .

Would you be willing to have a small fee added to your hunting license (under $15) ?

What is the one thing that truly protects hunting and fishing?…….. Let me help you out it’s money..!

The funds generated from these activities is what insulates them from becoming obsolete. There is big industry surrounding hunting and fishing and the tributary markets that stem from the main core is almost too hard to factor in, such as ATV sales, tourism, truck sales, food etc. Through my conversations with decision makers and my involvement in advocacy, Its my feeling the best way to insulate the selloff of public lands is to add another funding source that would make it fiscally irresponsible for anyone to dispose of public lands. So how do we do this? By creating a small maintenance/management fee or pass on our hunting license. Hear me out! I know many of your brains went to why not add a fee for the general public as a whole why add yet another burden to hunting and fishing to carry. I agree on one hand, there is an estimated 64 million users of public lands and The National Park Service reported a record 331.9 million recreation visits in calendar year 2024 if they all paid $5 maintenance/management fee annually as general public we are adding billions of dollars annually to the coffers, which will make it so law makers can’t easily dismiss the value of public lands. This is true! But we need to look at it from the hunter/angler standpoint. One of our biggest arguments to anti-hunting is we fund conservation and access and if we water down this argument by spreading the burden of this funding to the general public it minimizes our voice. So we need to set things in place that fortify this argument while helping us show extra value to law makers of where we recreate. We can’t do it 100% on our own I feel that the National park service should add or increase their entry by (arbitrary example)  $8 ear marking this money $3 for maintenance and $3 specifically to public lands and $2 toward educating the public on the benefits of hunting and fishing . On the hunting and fishing side, we would have a bit more complex of a split but the monies would go toward Public lands, creating more opportunity, better quality, and  bridging the gap between the general public and sportsmen.  

  Many will say it’s our lands, it’s unconstitutional to add a fee to access our lands but if you look at it like this if I own a home there’s a good chance I have to pay for an HOA, or insurance or some fee on owning that house etc.. And whether I own a house or vehicle outright I still have to pay for maintenance. I just feel like its small drop in the bucket and the benefits are far reaching. I have been conducting a poll for the past 3 years if hunters would be ok with adding a few dollars to lic , tag and app fees to have more hunting opportunity or better quality hunting and I haven’t had a single person fill out the survey say they were against the idea as long as the money went back to what it was deemed to be for, I say we expand this and have a percentage go to increasing opportunity, a portion go to bridging the gap between non-hunters and hunters and percentage go toward insulating public lands specifically.  The details of this concept will still need much debate and a lot of input from sportsmen and women but I think the concept there of has a lot of merit and will do wonders for the hunting and fishing community as a whole and will work towards insulating public lands. I would like to see if there is support for this concept so if you could please take the poll below and let me know if this is worth pursuing.