courtesy of Fin & Fur Films
The People of The Peregrine Fund: Adam Miller
For many of our staff members, the path to conservation starts early, and Adam Miller is no exception. “I grew up hunting and fishing right here in this swamp,” he says, looking around at the western Pennsylvania landscape he calls home. “I feel privileged to have had that opportunity as a kid, and it’s something that I want to make sure is around for my daughter and my family going forward.”
That desire led him to conservation and a career working with fish and wildlife across North America from Alaska to Vermont—and then a podcast episode changed his life. The episode featured Chris Parish and Leland Brown, co-founders of our North American Lead-Free Partnership (NALP), an organization formed to address lead exposure in wildlife. Traditional lead bullets fragment extensively when striking their target, and fragments are invariably left behind in the gut pile (the internal organs left behind after a harvest). Scavenging wildlife such as vultures and eagles feed on these remains and unknowingly ingest lead, which can cause poisoning and death.
“I was really excited to hear about this group of hunters and conservationists that came together,” Adam recalls. He reached out to Chris, and the rest was history. “Now, lo and behold, I work for The Partnership,” he says with a smile.
The NALP is an ever-growing association of nearly 70 state and tribal wildlife agencies, hunting organizations, industry partners, landowners, and other hunting stakeholders that utilizes a strategy of educational outreach and incentive programs to encourage hunters to engage in lead reduction methods such as using lead-free ammunition or removing lead-tainted gut piles from the field. As the NALP’s Northeast Program Manager, Adam seeks to grow the organization’s foothold in territory stretching from Maine to Virginia, an area currently underrepresented in the NALP, which began and saw much of its early growth in the western US.
“What I’m most proud of is the momentum we’re seeing nationwide,” says Adam. “We’ve seen that when we share information and resources on how to address an issue, hunters will come together and collectively tackle that issue.” A keystone example was documented by research in Arizona, where an average of over 87% of hunters participated in voluntary lead-free hunting ammunition best management practices following NALP engagement for nearly 20 years. “Hunters want to be part of the solution. And they’ve demonstrated that for years,” Adam says.
Non-partisanship and collaboration, key aspects of the NALP’s approach, are also seen across many aspects of The Peregrine Fund’s work and are core tenets of our Complete Conservation™ strategy. Adam notes that he’s excited by his work not just because of helping to protect scavenging birds and other wildlife, but also by its potential application to other far-reaching conservation challenges.
“The Partnership and The Peregrine Fund really exemplify the idea of working collaboratively through conservation," he says. The results speak for themselves: hundreds and hundreds of stakeholders engaged and countless lead fragments never appearing on the landscape. “When we work together, we can accomplish a lot of things.”
