Change in conservation education?

“To change is difficult. Not to change is fatal.” Anonymous Lynnelle Bianco from Bold Vision Consulting wrote a post on change over at MaineToday.com which started me thinking about the future of conservation education. I attended hearing last week where a proposal to encourage hunter safety to change its methods of delivery was presented. The folks that oversee the program and many instructors stood up and said that they saw no need to change and certainly not in any hurry. After all the hunter safety record over the last forty or so years is a great success story. But in classic fashion a successful past does not guarantee a successful future.
In this instance the hunter safety folks are the gatekeepers to those that wish to participate in wildlife conservation in our state and country. Since most wildlife work is funded by the fees on sporting equipment and hunting license sales. As our society has become more urban and hunting is no longer the only entertainment available to many of our citizens, hunter safety has become not just a safety program but a barrier to participation. Few folks in these times even a rural state like Maine have hours and hours to spend in a class. Clearly we need to figure a way to streamline the process while taking advantage of the great leaps in technology that have come in the last fifteen years. Not to mention what kind of message are we sending to a 15 year old when an instructor stands and delivers a twenty year old curriculum using 25 year old methods. Retro to say the least? Outdated and irrelevant at the worst. I of course have some responsibility here on the board of directors of the Maine Conservation School. We need to look at our struggling programs and think differently about our methods and delivery. I don’t have any answers at the moment but I definitely want to have the conversation in the next year. Because I am in a business undergoing a rapid transition (in fact I am currently having a new web presence built to take advantage of the changes in the last four years) I understand the critical need to move all of this forward in the very near future.