The Nature Conservancy has recruited more than 1 million members and has been responsible for protecting more than 15 million acres of wild land in the United States and 102 million acres in Latin America, Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific -- a dynamic organization with a solid reputation for its integrity.

Recently, The Nature Conservancy funded a research project that showed people in the United States and other developed nations spend far less time outdoors than the previous generation did. The data covers a wide variety of life-recreation sports from the U.S. to Spain to Japan, etc.

The study builds on earlier research documenting that between 1981 and 1991, visits to national parks had declined from 1-1.3 percent per year, depending on the activity studied. That's a 10-13 percent drop in the 10-year period.

Since 1991, The Nature Conservancy research looked beyond national-park use to camping, backpacking, fishing, hiking and hunting. The data showed the decline in nature-oriented activities has plummeted 18-25 percent in nearly two decades.

Stephanie Meeks, acting president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy, made an excellent point about these statistics.

"If we lose our connection to the natural world, we'll lose our appreciation for the food, water and clean air it provides us," Meeks said. "The next generations will feel little compulsion to protect it."

And Meeks didn't mention the decline in tourism-generated dollars that states such as Maine will see because of this development.

However, The Nature Conservancy-funded research missed an interesting statistic -- not a criticism but a simple observation:

According to wildlife biologists at the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, Maine hunters have declined from 215,000 licensed individuals in 1982 to about 170,000 now.

However, these biologists noted that on average, each hunter today expends more days per season in the woods than each one did a generation ago -- a bright spot.

This trend of each hunter hunting more is generally a nationwide phenomenon, too, backed up by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service data. In short, the future demise of hunting, a popular topic with 21st-century journalists, may be greatly exaggerated.

Recently, Harry Vanderweide, an editor-writer and TV-personality from Augusta, was telling me that this stat about the increasing number of hunter days illustrates two obvious pluses:

1. This generation of hunters is indeed serious, and serious people spend more money for their endeavors. In a nutshell, this group can support more businesses and generate more revenue and jobs than this group did 30 years ago.

2. Hunters can also rally a groundswell of support when an anti-movement threatens their avocation because this sport offers its practitioners more than recreation. It's a way of life deeply ingrained in the soul.

Vanderweide has spent a lifetime, making money from outdoors sports as a general manager of an extremely successful regional outdoors magazine and host of two television shows, so his words carry weight.

The Information and Education Division at DIF&W has recently claimed that Maine has more than 200,000 licensed hunters, which disagrees with my figure of 170,000. However, DIF&W is counting license sales, not the actual Maine hunting population of 170,000 individual hunters.

For example, someone like me might buy a general hunting license, an archery license and a black-powder permit for the two-week season after the regular deer season closes. When I buy two licenses and a permit, DIF&W counts me as three hunters instead of one.

One measurable outdoors "sport" intrigues me -- wildlife watching. In one of the old Boyle studies from 1990 at the University of Maine, it showed wildlife watchers generated $33.2 million of the $1 billion-plus annually that Maine's hunting, fishing and wildlife-watchers had produced in those years. It really added impetus to a movement for the state to at least attempt to cater to the binocular-spotting scope crowd.

The late Bill Silliker, a world-class wildlife photographer, and I have engaged in debates about wildlife watching, though. He thought it was a serious movement, but I have often wondered about a salient point. How serious is the average wildlife watcher?

How many wildlife watchers in Maine -- and this includes birdwatchers, too -- park a vehicle and head to the woods with binoculars or spotting scope just to see critters?

Wildlife watching in Maine often means riding around in a vehicle, looking for roadside critters. This must make up a huge percentage -- surely in the high 90-percent range -- of wildlife watchers who do not hunt, fish, hike, photograph and so forth.

Woodland wildlife watching does not appeal to the faint of heart. In my adult life, I have spent a lot of time in the middle of the forest, sitting behind a camera with a long lens, waiting for deer, moose, bear, etc. After passing thousands of hours, doing this, I can say with certainty that a photographer-wildlife watcher spends lots of time in the heat with insects gnawing on exposed skin or in low temperatures with gelid air seeping into joints.

I'll also wager and take my winnings to the bank that average bird watchers spend nearly 100 percent of their birding time, watching birdfeeders in their yard. Not many birders make a great effort to head into the wild to watch birds with binoculars or spotting scope.

The above is no criticism, either, just an observation that pops into my mind when people say wildlife watching is growing.

There may be high spots in outdoors sports, but as The Nature Conservancy research shows, many outdoors sports are losing ground to the electronic age, and as Meeks said, "We need the next generation to both value the natural world in which we live and fight to protect it."

People today have too many distractions in the form of myriad television channels and all the other diversions from the information and electronic age. Recruitment for most outdoors sports is heading in the wrong direction, and I don't see this trend turning around in the foreseeable future.

Ken Allen of Belgrade Lakes is a writer, editor and photographer.