Would culling the Michigan hunter population have prevented the collapse?
LANSING, Michigan––Once reputedly the most influential state-level pro-hunting lobbying voice in the U.S., the Michigan United Conservation Clubs are “dissolving after almost 90 years because of ongoing financial struggles,” reported Dan Basso on May 6, 2026 for the Lansing State Journal.
The fiscal collapse of Michigan United Conservation Clubs follows media reports that the Michigan Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Division is also “facing a critical funding crisis,” as the Detroit News put it in January 2026.
‘The division relies heavily on hunting and fishing license sales. However, license fees have not been increased since 2014,” the Detroit News explained, while “Fewer young people are taking up hunting and fishing, leading to a steady decrease in total license sales.”
Summer youth camps & lowered hunting age fail
The Michigan United Conservation Clubs had operated a summer youth camp since 1946 to encourage more young people to hunt, fish, and trap, but acknowledged Michigan United Conservation Clubs lobbyist Dave Nyberg, to Lane Blackmer of the Traverse City Record-Eagle on November 15, 2010, “For every 100 adults who no longer hunt, there are only 26 replacements.”
Hoping to counter that trend, the Michigan United Conservation Clubs in 2011 won legislation lowering the legal age for hunting deer with firearms to 10, if accompanied by a licensed adult. Hunting small game with firearms was already legal at age 10.
Political opposition grows to group who once got whatever they wanted
But the trend toward declining hunting participation, especially among young people, has only accelerated in the fifteen years since.
In consequence, Michigan Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Division staffing has reportedly dropped by 20% since 2005, “forcing the division to leave positions vacant to manage the budget gap,” the Detroit News said.
“Lawmakers have debated boosting the Michigan Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Division budget by making state park passes mandatory or increasing license fees, but these proposals have faced significant political opposition,” the Detroit News added.
For more than 70 years the hunting, fishing, and trapping constituency of the Michigan United Conservation Clubs made sure that whatever the Michigan Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Division wanted, it got, with the proviso that anything it got went to expand hunting, fishing, and trapping opportunities.
License sales fall
Currently about 465,000 Michigan residents per year buy a total of about two million hunting, fishing, and trapping permits, an average of more than four permits apiece per year for various types of hunting, fishing, and trapping.
The most permits, about 600,000 per year, are sold for deer hunting.
But the number of Michiganders buying any hunting permits has dropped by about 200,000 since the year 2000.
The number of Michiganders belonging to the Michigan United Conservation Clubs appears to have fallen even farther and faster, as hundreds of thousands of former hunters have aged out of active participation and club membership.
The Michigan United Conservation Clubs board of directors “voted unanimously to dissolve, the Lansing-based group said in a May 4, 2026 press release,” wrote Lansing State Journal reporter Basso.
Dissolution to be done by mid-June
The Michigan United Conservation Clubs’ media release announcing the dissolution acknowledged “sustained financial challenges that have impacted long-term sustainability.”
Following “careful evaluation of the organization’s financial condition and available options,” the media release said, “the board determined that an orderly dissolution represents the most responsible course of action.”
Detailed Basso, “The dissolution process is expected to be completed by mid-June 2026. The organization said it will wind down operations, pay off any obligations, and distribute assets in accordance with the nonprofit’s charitable purpose and legal requirements.”
Laura Herberg, reporting for Bridge Michigan a day earlier, explained that the Michigan United Conservation Clubs’ financial distress included “a failed stopgap fundraising campaign to raise $100,000.
Worth less than a deer slug
“The 89-year-old nonprofit had shown signs that the end might be near,” Herberg added. “In late February 2026, it announced it was pausing its camp and magazine operations. On April 20, 2026, Michigan United Conservation Clubs said it needed to raise $100,000 or it would be forced to close.”
Michigan United Conservation Clubs president Stephen Dey told Herberg, she paraphrased, “that between actual and pledged donations, the organization raised around $34,000, about $66,000 short of their stopgap goal.
Saving Michigan United Conservation Clubs––if it really did represent the 40,000 hunters and fishers it claimed to represent––would have cost each of them just $2.50, less than the current average price of a deer slug.
Apparently the membership decided the Michigan United Conservation Clubs were no longer worth a deer slug.
Lost $1 million in just two years?
At the end, Herberg said, “Four staff members remained employed, down from around a dozen about a year ago.”
Founded on November 9, 1937 in Owosso, Michigan, by a consortium of 36 local hunting clubs at a meeting hosted by the Shiawassee Conservation Association, the Michigan United Conservation Clubs grew to 143 member clubs within four years, dropped to 128 member clubs during World War II, and despite having claimed as many as 400 member clubs early in the present century, and 500 by 2009, claimed 200 in 2024, and actually listed only 32 member clubs at dissolution.
As recently as 2023, according to IRS Form 990, Michigan United Conservation Clubs raised nearly $810,000 in donations and generated more than $762,000 in program service revenue, but reported losses of more than $390,000 in 2022, followed by losses exceeding $50,000 in 2023.
At that, though, Michigan United Conservation Clubs still claimed more than $1 million in net assets.
Managed for deer overpopulation
The Michigan Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Division for decades danced to the tune called by the Michigan United Conservation Clubs, even boasting in a 1988 report to the clubs that although the natural carrying capacity for deer in the state was estimated at circa one million, it had “managed” the deer population up to 1.3 million.
That created a “huntable surplus” of 300,000, or a deer for every other hunter.
As deer became more abundant, especially in suburban areas, more hunters began killing deer within city limits.
Responding to public safety concerns, the city of Saginaw in 1999 banned the use of firearms and archery within city limits. The Michigan United Conservation Clubs backed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the ban, losing on June 20, 2007 in the Michigan Supreme Court.
“Green light to ban hunting”
Fumed Michigan United Conservation Clubs policy director Donna Stine to Kathy Barks Hoffman of Associated Press, “This ruling essentially is a green light to ban hunting. There simply was no reason for the Supreme Court to make such a radical statement with statewide implications.”
When continuing deliberately managed deer overpopulation predictably contributed to the spread of disease among the herds, including bovine tuberculosis outbreaks, the Michigan United Conservation Clubs lobbied for an extended deer hunting season.
“Unfortunately, the regular hunting season is not sufficient to manage the herd to make sure the area is TB-free,” Stine on April 30, 2008 told Sheri McWhirter of the Traverse City Record-Eagle.
Chronic wasting disease
Chronic wasting disease, called CWD for short, appeared later in 2008 in a Kent County deer breeding operation.
“The disease, which causes drastic weight loss in elk and deer, can be fatal and is easily transmitted between animals when they group in small areas,” explained Detroit News writer Jim Lynch.
In response, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Division banned baiting deer during hunting season, but under pressure from the Michigan United Conservation Clubs, lifted the ban in 2011.
Again predictably, chronic wasting disease entered the wild deer population, then rapidly spread around feeding and baiting locations.
“Michigan United Conservation Clubs executive director Dan Eichinger called the news ‘nothing short of tragic,’ saying it was ‘a day many of us hoped would never come, though it is not wholly unexpected,'” reported Jeff Karoub for Associated Press on May 26, 2015.
“If you don’t see deer, there are no deer”
The Michigan Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Division again banned baiting deer during the Lower Peninsula hunting season in 2018, but the Republican-dominated state legislature has since then twice passed bills to rescind the ban, which is currently expected to be rescinded before the start of the 2026 deer season.
Meanwhile Michigan United Conservation Clubs continued to lobby for more and more deer.
Explained Michigan United Conservation Clubs research policy specialist Amy Spray on February 20, 2009, to John Flesher of Associated Press, for hunters “Perception is reality. If you’re not seeing deer, there are no deer.”
Roadkill
As greater numbers of deer brought ever more frequent deer/car collisions, usually fatal to the deer, also killing about a dozen Michigan drivers per year, Michigan United Conservation Clubs encouraged drivers to salvage road-killed venison.
Deer/car collisions increased 28%, to 58,000 a year between 2014 and 2024.
By then the Michigan United Conservation Clubs had won legislation, in 2023, to eliminate jail time and lower the fine for shooting a deer without reporting it.
Mourning doves
The Michigan United Conservation Clubs in 2004 legislatively overturned a longstanding state ban on hunting mourning doves, but that may have been the Pyrrhic victory beginning a string of losses leading to their ultimate collapse.
By the end of 2004, the Committee to Restore the Dove Shooting Ban, backed by the Humane Society of the U.S., had initiated a petition drive to stop mourning dove hunting by ballot initiative.
Michigan United Conservation Clubs executive director Sam Washington warned that the ultimate goal of the petition drive was to ban all hunting.
“Emotional vindictiveness”
“It has nothing to do with doves,” Washington insisted.
The public did not buy that argument.
“I’m not sure how we did it,” recalled Wayne Pacelle, then president of the Humane Society of the U.S. and now president of Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy, “but we won all 83 counties and crushed dove hunting 69% to 31%.”
Butt-hurt, the Michigan United Conservation Clubs and Michigan Farm Bureau Federation in 2006 retaliated by opposing Michigan bills to establish state income tax check-offs to fund spay/neuter programs and enforce anti-cruelty laws.
Explained longtime Michigan Humane Society lobbyist Eileen Liska (1948-2017), “They feared that any time a humane society received a grant for spay/neuter programs or anti-cruelty law enforcement, improvement, that would enable them to take the money from their budget that would have been used for such activities and shift it over to another part of the budget that allows them to engage in legislative advocacy, notably including promoting bills or referenda that hinder or halt hunting. It was pure emotional vindictiveness.”
Horses, moose, & mute swans
The Michigan United Conservation Clubs went on to lose a 2009 battle against horse riding access to the Pigeon River Country State Forest, despite threatening that allowing horse riding access might cost the state $25 million a year in Pittman-Robertson funding for fish and wildlife conservation programs.
The Michigan United Conservation Clubs also lost a campaign begun in 2010 to resume moose hunting, suspended due to moose scarcity since the 19th century.
But Michigan United Conservation Clubs legislative policy staffer Dave Nyberg in May 2012 endorsed state efforts to exterminate feral mute swans through sport hunting.
This campaign has so far reportedly reduced the Michigan mute swan population from about 15,000 at peak to circa 8,000.
Wolf hunting
Beginning in 2013, when Congress removed wolves from Endangered Species Act protection, the Michigan United Conservation Clubs fought to open wolf hunting in Michigan, closed 40 years earlier.
Erin McDonough, then executive director of the Michigan United Conservation Clubs argued that “regulated sport hunting is part of a scientific strategy to keep the wolf population healthy, while controlling its numbers in areas where attacks on livestock and pets are a recurring problem,” and “ensuring that Michigan’s wildlife resources are managed properly and that Michigan’s hunting, fishing and trapping heritage is protected.”
“Every hunter that I know likes the idea of having wolves out there,” agreed Michigan United Conservation Clubs vice president George Lindquist. “They just feel we should be managing them like any other wildlife.”
Like deer?
Wanted wolf trapping, too
“This is an important step to protecting the rights to hunt, fish , and trap in Michigan from radical animal rights organizations,” added Dan Eichinger, succeeding McDonough as Michigan United Conservation Clubs executive director.
The Michigan United Conservation Clubs in 2014 did win a resumption of wolf hunting.
But Michigan United Conservation Clubs spokesperson Drew YoungDyke contended that the wolf hunting rules imposed by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Division were too restrictive, should be liberalized to improve hunters’ success rate, and should have allowed leghold trapping.
The resumed Michigan wolf hunting season was halted in 2022 when wolves were restored by court order to Endangered Species Act protection.
Coyotes
The Michigan United Conservation Clubs’ last stand may have been a losing court fight to keep a year-round open season on coyotes, after the Michigan Natural Resources Commission in 2024 closed the hunt during pupping season, from April 15 to July 15 each year.
About 7,000 hunters killed 13,000 coyotes statewide, Michigan United Conservation Clubs policy and government affairs manager Justin Tomei told Jennifer Dixon of the Detroit Free Press.
Rabbit season!
Did the Michigan United Conservation Clubs ever actually do anything to protect wildlife?
Once, sort of, maybe. Drew YoungDyke told Detroit Free Press writer Robert Allen on November 22, 2014 that Michigan United Conservation Clubs members had “hinge-cut” about 135 trees so that branches would droop down to the ground, creating cover for snowshoe hares.
But that also happens to be a tactic for setting up snaring sites.
“I had lots of battles with them,” recalled Pacelle of Michigan United Conservation Clubs.
“This is shocking,” Pacelle said of the dissolution.
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Great piece. I should have mentioned, too, that we put two wolf hunting referenda on the ballot in 2014. They had some varying elements, but we stomped them both – 55% to 45% on a straight wolf hunting and trapping measure and 64 % to 36% on a closely related measure.
Michigan Wolf Hunting Referendum, Proposal 1 (2014) – Ballotpedia
Michigan Natural Resources Commission Referendum, Proposal 2 (2014) – Ballotpedia
These were straight on HSUS (during my era) v. MUCC and it was a drubbing.
Mixed blessings.
Sharing with gratitude.
If the great state of Michigan is really suffering from lack of funding in its Wildlife Conservation Department, it may want to look at precedents from other States. Oregon just passed a resolution granting more funding for wildlife conservation. Not sure of the ruling number at the moment.
These organizations are shooting themselves in the foot, to make a pun, by not seeing the writing on the wall and embracing non-consumptive outdoor activities.
They could evolve with the times and become organized associations for activities like wildlife watching, hiking, and camping, instead of chasing the shrinking pool of people who enjoy killing animals as recreation. But no–they are so stubborn and stuck in their ways they cannot see that there are plenty of people who love the outdoors but don’t wish to be part of killing wildlife. Their struggles are their own fault.