A column in last week’s outdoors section of the Sun-Gazette chronicled some troubling, important concerns about hunting in our state.

Hunting cabins and sportsmen’s clubs are facing the same pressures from inflation that our families and businesses are facing. Beyond inflation, changing interests are also affecting hunting. And the state Game Commission’s changes to the schedule of hunting season likely have an impact as well — and we fear it may not be a positive one.

Even as interest may wane, hunting remains incredibly important for rural Pennsylvania. According to a report in the Times-News of Erie in 2022, hunting and fishing contribute about $1.5 billion to the state’s economy. Hotels and inns, sporting goods stores, restaurants and convenience stores deep into our forestlands depend on the customers the traditional pastime bring into those woods. According to the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, “more Pennsylvania jobs were supported by outdoor recreation in 2020 than by the production of durable goods.”

Additionally and also according to the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, the state collects more than $91 million from licensing and taxes on firearms and other sporting goods — money used for state conservation projects.

And hunting plays a necessary role in management of deer population numbers and other species’ populations. Without hunting, deer would soon become too numerous, first encroaching even more on family farms, eating more of their crops and infringing their ability to survive and then, at an inflection point, starving with the population collapsing under its own overabundance. This cycle would be destructive up and down the ecological food chain.

Hunting is an extremely important tradition. We hope the state Game Commission and rural communities can better assess the steps needed to preserve and promote this pastime so that it can continue to be an economic engine and job creator for our rural communities and the most effective means of ensuring critically needed balance in the ecology of our forests.

The consequences otherwise — for nature and for the livelihood of our families, neighbors and communities — would be dire.