Summer trout fishing shut down in rivers across the West because of dangerously warm water temperatures. Ice fishing seasons have come and gone without safe ice. Elk hunts are canceled because of ever-worsening wildfires. Moose populations plummet from tick infestation. Droughts crushing whitetail food plot dreams yet again and inciting recurring nightmares of EHD. Warming lake and ocean waters fueling extreme algal blooms and fish die-offs. Millions of acres of forest are wiped out by perpetually growing swarms of bark beetles.
This is our reality today. The world we’re handing off to my sons and maybe your children too.
As a hunter or angler in the 2020s, it’s becoming increasingly hard to head afield and not notice the impacts of the changing climate. The question of whether this climate change thing is an overblown political hoax has passed. The idea that it’s a hypothetical crisis coming far in the future now seems quaint. A 2022 national poll of hunters and anglers by the TRCP confirms this realization even within the hook and bullet community, with more than 70% of respondents recognizing that climate change ishappening.
It’s here. Right now. Changing our woods and waters and wetlands and wild places. If you can erase from your mind whatever the partisan talking heads have told you, whether from left or right, and simply open your eyes, you can’t help but see it.
The last eight years have been the world’s hottest in recorded history. And while there have been other significant warming periods in the history of the earth, these have played out over the course of thousands if not millions of years. Our situation has unspooled in about 50. It’s unprecedented. And it’s sure to continue impacting fish and wildlife populations, the wild landscapes they call home, and our opportunities to pursue them.
