Fewer hunters

Americans are hunting less than ever, a study by the Census Bureau and the US Fish and Wildlife Service shows. The number of hunters has declined by almost a million, to just over 13 million, from 1991 to 2001. The decline was steepest where hunting might be expected to persist--in the West. There are only about 274,000 hunters left in all of California.

Unfortunately, the reason seems to be not enlightenment but lack of quarry. A contributing factor, says George Cooper of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, is a dismaying one: "habitat loss due to urban sprawl."

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