Since 1989, NAWCA grants totaling more than $1.6 billion dollars have conserved nearly 30 million acres of wetland habitat. (Shutterstock image)
Think of all the good ideas that have their expression in our conservation heritage. There’s the good idea that in order to have wildlife to hunt and fish for, the "users"—hunters and anglers—should help pay for game and fisheries management. That user-pay idea culminated in the creation of state wildlife agencies, and the mechanism of hunting and fishing licenses.
There’s the good idea that wildlife should be owned by everyone in general and nobody in particular. That’s the public-trust idea behind our very democratic arrangement in which we all have a stake in the fate of our ducks and deer and doves, whether we hunt for them or not.
Then...