New research reveals the enormous contribution wildlife makes to food systems in the United States, illustrating why measuring nature’s benefits to people matters for better conservation decisions.

What we choose to measure matters because it shapes the questions we ask, the trade-offs we see, and the decisions we make.

Conservation has long measured ecological outcomes such as species abundance, habitat condition, protected area coverage and population trends. These indicators are essential, but they do not capture every outcome that healthy ecosystems generate. When some of those outcomes remain unmeasured, they also risk remaining undervalued in conservation and policy decisions.

New research from Conservation Visions’ Wild Harvest Initiative, supported by Jamma Conservation & Communities, helps make one often-overlooked contribution visible: the role of wildlife in food systems.

How much food does regulated hunting actually provide?

Using harvest data from all 50 US states over five hunting seasons, the study quantified the amount of wild meat obtained through state-regulated big game hunting and estimated what it would cost to replace that meat with commercially produced alternatives.

The findings were substantial. The study estimated that regulated big game hunting produces approximately 236,000 tonnes of wild meat every year, enough for around 1.39 billion meals. Replacing that wild meat with an equivalent quantity of domestically produced meat would cost an estimated US$3.2 billion annually. Beyond the financial cost, the researchers note that replacing wild meat would likely increase reliance on conventional livestock production, with its associated environmental impacts, including greater land use, greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity pressures.

The surprise is not that wildlife provides food. Most people already know that. The surprise is how much.

By putting numbers to that contribution, the research turns something that has long been understood into something that can now be measured, compared and considered in conservation and policy decisions. Once a contribution can be quantified, it becomes part of the evidence base alongside ecological, social and economic outcomes.

Better Evidence Leads to Better Decisions

Every day, conservation decisions involve trade-offs. Should land be managed for agriculture, tourism, forestry, wildlife or some combination of these? Should a particular policy be encouraged, restricted or changed?

The quality of those decisions depends on the quality of the evidence available.

For years, we have been able to measure many ecological outcomes of conservation. Research like this adds another piece to the puzzle by quantifying one of the benefits that healthy wildlife populations provide to society.

This is one of the ideas at the heart of Human-Centred Conservation. It recognises that conservation is not only about understanding how people affect nature, but also about understanding how nature contributes to people’s lives. The more completely we can measure those contributions, the better equipped we are to make informed decisions that consider both people and wildlife.