To me it's unfortunate that this figure of 48 million birders ever got produced by the USFWS and is so often cited. It's so far from the truth that it's not even close to funny. Perhaps someone in a fantasy world thought that the environment might be saved if this gigantic overestimate convinced some congresspeople that Americans really really really cared about it.

It is based on surveys, and apparently anyone who said "sure, I had a bird feeder out at my cabin in 1973" or "yes, I sometimes look at the birds in my yard" was classified as a birder. As I drive around the countryside and see a trailer park full of hummingbird feeders, most of them empty, I may think to myself "now there's a concentration of birders."

And we don't have anywhere near the percentage of birders/nature lovers that the UK does, in my experience.

I wonder if there really were 48 million birders, what the country would be like (other than tripping over them wherever you went, as Kevin implied).
-----
Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115
206-528-1382
dennispaulson at comcast.net

On Mar 15, 2011, at 12:00 PM, tweeters-request at mailman1.u.washington.edu wrote:

> Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2011 16:07:59 -0700
> From: Kevin Purcell <kevinpurcell at pobox.com>
> Subject: [Tweeters] Re: Marketplace on Audubon efforts to get younger
> people birdwatching
> To: Tweeters <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
> Cc: Kevin Purcell <kevinpurcell at pobox.com>
> Message-ID: <2F4E9459-97D2-4911-AF00-CC8812563EE5 at pobox.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> On Mar 14, 2011, at 1:33 PM, Kevin Purcell wrote:
>
> They open the ridiculous US Fish and Wildlife "48 million birders" stat. All 48 million people go out birding with bins and guide all the time (that's 1:6 of the population of the USA of all ages). You can't move for birders.
>
> A better estimate is perhaps the membership of the RSPB in the UK which has 2.3 million people in a population of 60 million: 3.8% of the population. That's an excellent number. They more than doubled their membership in the 2000s. I think Audubon would love to have that level of membership (11 million people!) with a wide range of demographics (RSPB has a strong appeal to kids).
> --
> Kevin Purcell (Capitol Hill, Seattle, WA)


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