B&C Fellow - Jonathan Karlen

University of Montana - Master of Public Administration, Public Policy Certificate - Projected to Graduate 2022
Mitigating Statutory Barriers to Recruiting and Retaining College Student Hunters

Jonathan is a research fellow with the University of Montana (UM) Boone and Crockett Wildlife Conservation Program. Jonathan graduated from UM with a B.S. in Wildlife Biology and a minor in Climate Change studies in 2021, and he completed a Master’s of Public Administration with a Public Policy Concentration in 2022. Jonathan has served as a Demmer Scholar with the Congressional Affairs Office of the U.S. Forest Service and a Max Baucus Leader with the U.S. Senate Majority Leader. He conducted wildlife field work in the Bob Marshall Wilderness as technician with MT Fish, Wildlife and Parks and has worked in a rural, high desert ranching community with the Arizona Game and Fish Department. He was elected to the MT State Legislature in 2022 where his committee assignments include Natural Resources and Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

Mitigating Statutory Barriers to Recruiting and Retaining College Student Hunters

College students are quickly emerging as a critical population for hunter recruitment and retention. I have been studying how a nationwide patchwork of hunting license residency statutes may pose barriers to recruiting college student hunters. In Montana, we learned that the price of a non-resident student hunting license had become unaffordable and was excluding students eager to learn to hunt. To address this issue, we wrote a bill that makes hunting more accessible for Montana students. We successfully lobbied the legislature and the bill was signed into law by Governor Gianforte in May 2021. We are now working on ways to help other states adopt similar policies to make hunting accessible to students.

My senior undergraduate thesis with the University of Montana Boone and Crockett Program studied the impact of recent, mixed-severity wildfire on mammal species richness, evenness, and diversity in Western Montana. We hope to publish the results of this study in fall 2021. 

Jonathan - In the News

B&C in the Trenches: Montana Researchers Seek to Clarify Hunting Regs

CSF Partnering with Boone & Crockett Program at the University of Montana on Bill to Make Hunting Accessible to Montana Students

Boone and Crockett Club-backed Hunting Bill Signed into law by Montana Gov. Gianforte