"In the end we will conserve only what we love....We will love only what we understand....and we will understand only what we are taught", Baba Dioum, African Ecologist

“ We shouldn’t think about youth’s experiences in nature as an extracurricular activity, but as a vital element for healthy development”, author Richard Louv The Last Child in the Woods

"JrAHA is about getting our youth outdoors not for just an event, but to begin a lifetime of outdoor recreational experiences and to foster the stewardship of our nautral resources", founder Ed Gerhardt

About Junior Anglers & Hunters of America

Governing Board
Honorary Advisers
Leadership Council

Mission Statement

JrAHA’s Mission Statement is “to foster connectivity to nature by being a gateway for accessing opportunities outdoors and by teaching outdoors recreational skills, safety & ethics, environmental responsibility and conservation practices”.

Our target constituents are mainstream inner city youths and families that have had traditionally “little to no” connections to nature, and without some outreach efforts, may very well never make the connections to nature.

JrAHA’s strategy is to utilize the two most popular outdoors recreational activities, fishing and hunting to make the connections to nature for a lifetime.  

The JrAHA objectives are:

1. To create a connection to nature that is practiced over a lifetime through increasing knowledge, developing skills and providing ongoing access to new outdoor opportunities.
2. To develop self-interest in individuals (i.e. a love for fishing and/or hunting) that naturally motivates them to protect and sustain the fishing & hunting environment through conservation practices.   Ergo an educated and dedicated outdoors person has a self-interest that also protects the South Texas watershed, its estuaries and Gulf of Mexico.
3. To get young people outdoors with activities good for their spiritual and physical health.  Childhood obesity is rampant and is directly related to current health issues and if not checked will continue to diminish the general public’s health.  While structured exercises, workouts and physical sports are productive efforts; behavioral changes for lifelong practices are just as important and often are more productive over many years.  Being outdoors fishing and hunting requires types of unstructured exercise that can decrease sedentary lifestyles and reduce stress.
4. To increase the numbers of persons purchasing fishing and hunting licenses, therefore directly increasing funds to support environmental and conservation efforts.

The single largest target opportunity is the youth and then their parents.  Houston ISD is the seventh largest school district in the nation and by far the largest in Texas with over 200,000 students.  JrAHA & TPWD have successfully entered into a partnership with HISD and particularly the inner city schools to teach for PE credits fishing, archery, boating safety and hunting safety.  

Other major tactics include providing access to continue outdoors experiences and increasing the time these young people and their parents spend outdoors together, routinely through after school programs, fishing, hunting, boating, archery and shooting sports clubs and tournaments.