A Historic Record of Success… A Strategic Framework for the Future

The Club has established a lasting and impressive legacy of historic achievements that launched the conservation movement in North America. Theodore Roosevelt and early Club leaders developed a bold and successful strategy to reverse the decimation of wildlife and natural resources they were witnessing at the end of the 1800s. This strategy formed the foundation and framework for North America’s system of conservation. Although the challenges the Club faces today are different, they still involve managing habitat and wildlife in balance with a growing human population and need for natural resources for multiple uses.

Strategic Approach

The Plan is designed to narrow, focus, and improve the work of Club by setting priority focus areas of Policy, Education, and Hunting Ethics. The budget will ensure the committees charged with implementing the Plan will have the resources they need to succeed. With this approach, the Club concentrates its limited financial and human resources on the activities likely to have the greatest impact on the top “Challenges to Conservation” identified in the Plan. The Plan’s primary strategic enhancement is diversifying and expanding our revenue sources, which will not only benefit the priority areas, but the Club as a whole. 
Read the Strategic Plan

Challenges to Conservation

There are numerous challenges to conservation, but the Membership concludes that the five challenges the Club is best positioned to address, given its mission and core competencies, are as follows:

• Loss of wildlife habitat. Habitat fragmentation due to anthropogenic pressures, urban expansion, climate change, and invasive species are increasing the rate of habitat loss for many wildlife species.    
• Less public support for hunting. The number of hunters is decreasing, as is public understanding of the role of hunting in conservation. Public trust management is increasingly being challenged and anti-hunting sentiments are becoming a greater influence on state wildlife commissions.      
• Threats to science-based wildlife management. Wildlife management decisions are becoming more politicized and subject to emotional influences rather than sound science, which results in long-term negative outcomes for both wildlife and people.  
• Less interest in hunting and conservation. Connections between people and the natural world are eroding due to urban lifestyles, digital entertainment, and younger generations not learning enough about conservation or the value of outdoor experiences.    
• Constraints on conservation funding. Conservation funding has steadily declined as a percentage of the U.S. federal budget over the past several decades, while the cost of managing wildlife and its habitat has increased. Funding sources have not diversified beyond the hunting community

MISSION STATEMENT

It is the mission of the Boone and Crockett Club to promote the conservation and management of wildlife, especially big game, and its habitat, to preserve and encourage hunting and to maintain the highest ethical standards of fair chase and sportsmanship in North America.