By Jared Frasier, Executive Director

A hard truth: Most hunting brands do far less for conservation and the future of hunting than they claim.

At least right now, today, in 2024. And though some people will throw around numbers that sound big in defense of the industry and their favorite brands… those numbers are pennies on the dollar for what they are claimed to be, could be, and need to be.

It goes without saying that as hunters, anglers, and outdoor enthusiasts - we expect that the brands selling gear and services for our favorite activities invest in protecting the future of those activities.

If you want your brand to be around in 100 years, investing in the activities you sell products and serves for just makes good business sense. Who is going to buy your gear or book your hunts if there are no hunters or good opportunities for them to get out?

But what if the owners of a brand do not care if it is around in 100 years?

What if they don’t care if the brand exists in 5 years?

What if they just want to suck up as much money, market-share, and personal clout as fast as possible - consequences for their employees, their customers, and wildlife be damned?

Allow me to introduce you to a little tactic I’ve dubbed “orange-washing.”

What is “Orange-Washing”?

You have probably heard of “green-washing.” That is when a business spends substantial resources on deceptive marketing and PR to say that their product or service is good for the planet, while it actually isn’t.

“Orange-washing” is a deceptive marketing and PR practice in which hunting brands spend substantial resources to claim that they support conservation and hunting but in reality give very little of their time or money to conservation or hunter education and ethics programs.

I call it orange-washing because instead of actually supporting programs that ensure a future for hunting and angling, they douse their brand in “hunter orange”: Media projects and PR tactics that on the surface make them look like they do more for wildlife than they actually do.

Very few actually give to the level they claim they do.

It should go without saying — You will not find 2% Certified brands participating in orange-washing!

While the majority of outdoor brands spend their dollars claiming that they do good for fish and wildlife, 2% Certified brands utilize our certification program to prove it.

For every dishonest action taken by an orange-washing brand, there are multiple 2% Certified brands doing the exact opposite: Giving their time and money to boots-on-the-ground wildlife projects, conservation advocacy, outdoor/conservation education, and access to the outdoors. Our members support well over 1,000 legitimate conservation causes and chapters of causes around the world.

And again, because they are certified with 2% for Conservation, they have our independent third-party verified proof that they actually care about what they claim to care about and do what they claim to do.

Shop 2% Certified Brands

What does orange-washing look like?

Thankfully, (or maybe unfortunately) once you can recognize orange-washing, you will notice it everywhere.

You have already seen it:

Ads nebulously touting “conservation is in our blood” and media calling themselves “conservationists” because they hunt… without promoting anything other than hunting as an activity that magically makes you a “conservationist” and while not being active volunteers or advocates for wildlife habitat or promoting volunteering for wildlife conservation and hunter education.
Creating “our ethos as hunters” or “our hunting heritage” puff pieces and media… while not discussing hunting ethics, promoting or engaging in hunter education, or the role of hunting in science-based conservation.
Calling trophy hunting clubs, sport shooting clubs, and firearm associations “conservation causes”… which they are not, but blurring the definitions helps keep the industry-wide orange-washing homogeny. We will go into further detail on this, later on.
Spending more money to create media showcasing their “commitment to conservation and hunting” in films, ads, industry award presentation sponsorships, podcasts, and any other imaginable medium… than they give to the conservation causes they claim to support.
- I have personally witnessed an outdoor brand spend more on their bar tab at the launch party for the film touting their “conservation ethos” than they actually gave to the conservation cause featured in the film. On more than one occasion.
Selling branded swag with things like “conservation” and “hunter-conservationist” emblazoned on the front… while no conservation cause benefits from the sale of that merchandise.

And the list goes on. If there is a way for an orange-washing brand to bastardize the word “conservation” to make an extra buck, they are doing it.

What damage does orange-washing do?

Aside from the obvious shortage of funds hitting the ground for wildlife and wildlife habitat, the biggest negative impacts of orange-washing are cultural.

Orange-washing promotes a culture of presumed victimhood.

There are dire cultural ramifications of an entire industry lying to the public while getting their customers to buy into the lie. A constant diet of orange-washed outdoor media has made most hunters wholly ineffective in the public arena in recent decades.

Orange-washing has given hunters a sense of entitlement (driven by the participation-trophy of “hunting is conservation”) that leaves them unprepared and often uninterested in engaging in the public arena for the very activity and wildlife they claim to love.

If you have volunteered to show up for public meetings or to fight ballot initiatives around wildlife habitat and hunting regulations, you have seen it. Hunters love to complain online and at the bar, but when it comes time to actually do the work and fight in the arena… very few show up.

And why should we expect them to do anything else?

They are simply imitating the actions of the outdoor industry brands and personalities they idolize. Hunting brands discovered in the 90’s that hunting television content complaining about the way the world is changing sells more product in the short-term than actually trying to make it better. And it doesn’t scare away investors. You can still get investors from dirty industry sectors if you mention habitat loss in your media but do not go to public meetings lobbying against industry development in wildlife habitat areas. You can still get private equity dollars from anti-hunters and wildlife privatization proponants as long as you do not fight ballot initiatives they support.

Orange-washing has taken the people who should be proponents of Theodore Roosevelt’s “Bull Moose Party” and turned them into a bunch of keyboard warriors who cannot be bothered to do more than complain into their own social media echo chambers.

The political landscape around hunting would look wildly different if the hunting gear and guiding industries were not so saturated by orange-washing.

Orange-washing pulls money away from conservation and hunter education to special interest groups.

Many hunters would be shocked to find out how much more money some outdoor brands spend on culture/political wars than actually defending hunting or wildlife. Hunting gear brands and guides give more money to firearm groups, outfitter associations, and exclusive hunting clubs with financial ties to ecosystem-destroying industries than to groups that actually do conservation work or provide hunter education. By our estimates, it's not even near parity -- it is closer to double the amount that they give to hunter education and wildlife conservation.

Meanwhile…

We have lost most of the Dall sheep in Alaska in the last 15 years — the population has absolutely plummeted due specifically to climate change.
Public land and water hunting opportunities for elk and deer are slipping away across the US as the privatization of access to wildlife takes over at its fastest pace ever. This is often driven by the same ultra-wealthy benefactors of these special interest groups and even with industry support for new “pay-to-play” services to gain access to private lands previously owned by agriculture families that would let hunters in with a handshake… not $200 for weekday access to hunt a whitetail doe.
Hunter education programs are closing down around the country for lack of volunteers, venues for classes, and even funding. Politicians backed by these interest groups have stripped down many hunter education programs around the country to the point that it is rare for a new hunter to have a single in-person interaction with an instructor. With the backing of firearm groups and hunting clubs, many states are now paying private companies to build their online hunter education courses under the guise of making the class “more accessible.” In reality, it leads to a less educated hunting public and a less educated hunting public is less effective at defending themselves. They also are less capable of recognizing attacks to wildlife habitat and loss of public hunting access.
Because most of these exclusive hunting clubs, outfitter associations, and shooting sports groups are not 501c3 organizations, they are legally allowed to fund political campaigns. More often than not, the candidates they support actively legislate against habitat protections, cut land/wildlife management agency budgets (in efforts to privatize both land and wildlife), and generally work against the interests of the average hunter. While the groups and their candidates claim to be conservationists and hunting advocates, many are little more than political pawns used to make hunting and wildlife more exclusive to themselves and their donors.

The marketing of these groups has been so successful that most hunters and employees of outdoor brands genuinely do not know they are being taken for a ride.

Almost every new business that certifies with us lists multiple firearm groups and hunting clubs in their applications, not knowing that their donations were going to political candidates and lobbying instead of conservation and hunter education. When we help them track down what their money actually went to, they are typically shocked and disappointed. It is why we started our Community Partner Program — to help our members connect with legitimate conservation causes doing real work for wildlife and the future of hunting. We help our members become substantially more effective at supporting conservation than their competitors who are not 2% Certified.

Yet, increasingly, companies are being pushed by their higher-ups to continue or pivot more of their giving to these other groups and away from trusted boots-on-the-ground conservation and hunter ethics groups. We have seen “Conservation Partnerships” employees pushed out or directly fired for advocating for conservation causes in recent years.

Why are outdoor brands shooting themselves in the feet like this?

Follow the money…

To be clear, many of our members also support great local rod’n gun clubs, archery leagues, and the ethics work of hunting clubs like the Boone & Crockett Club. We just do not count most of those donations towards their certifications unless it is directly traceable to boots-on-the-ground conservation projects, conservation advocacy/education, or access to wildlife.

What is driving orange-washing?

Corporate greed is the obvious culprit, but there is a new kid on the block driving orange-washing:

Private equity.

You have heard of it, because it is coming for everything you have, wish to have, and love to do.

For the last several years it has taken your favorite mom-and-pop shops, your favorite gear brands, and everything you need for your house. Heck, they’re also coming after your house as private equity now owns more than a quarter of homes in the US.

I’ll spare you the US finance lesson, but here are some key points:

Private equity firms manage investment funds that hold either partial ownership or complete ownership of almost any kind of business.
Many businesses that struggle to receive loans from banks see private equity as a favorable alternative to downsizing or selling to a competitor. Think “Shark Tank.”
Q1 2021 - Q2 2023 saw one of the highest spikes in private equity buyouts in US history, across nearly all major industries.
- To be clear, the hunting industry is not one that economists would call “major”, as it is a small portion the “Outdoor Recreation” industry. But, it is a comparatively stable industry. When people are struggling, they actually spend more on outdoor activities than when times are good, so the industry endures even with inflation struggles.
Private equity investment and buyouts in the US hunting industry hit an all-time high through 2022 and 2023 as they looked to stabilize their investment portfolios through the global inflation surge.

Over half of our business members were either partially or fully bought out by private equity since 2022.
Within a year, nearly all of these businesses reduced their support to conservation causes dramatically, if not completely.

So, what does this mean?

Can a business be bought and still be genuine supporters of conservation and hunter education/ethics programs?

Yes!

But rarely, if ever, if it is sold to a private equity firm.

Unlike corporate conglomerates that leverage synergies between the brands they own for long-term market share strength and profit, private equity typically tries to move on an aggressive timetable. One that mandates the stripping down of the brand, calving off of product lines, services, and employees, and ultimately the re-sale of the business after as much capital was sucked out of the brand’s public goodwill as possible. It is rarely a long-term investment, with some notable exceptions being the home services, resorts/hotels, and regional utilities. If you are familiar with what private equity has done to the craft beer industry in the last five years, you have an idea of what they are doing to the hunting gear and services industries.

To those who say, “well, that’s just business”, we couldn’t disagree more.

In the last two years, I have watched this be done to over 100 of our (now former) business members. Brands sought out “cheap money” for expansions or early retirements for their founders through private equity buyouts. Less than a year later, they were either completed converted to orange-washers or stripped out for parts and sold to their competitors. The story from their past employees, no matter what industry they were in, was all the same: A brand goes into the agreement as an authentic partner of conservation and trusted leader of consumers and comes out the other side sounding and looking like every other dishonest orange-washing brand in the hunting industry.

As most of these brands had multi-year partnership agreements with the conservation causes they supported, there is a bit of a delay in the effects of this industry-wide takeover hitting the pockets of conservation groups. But, if you ask the development coordinator of an average conservation group how their donations from mid-sized hunting brands and guides are looking compared to years past… you’ll see that it has started. The numbers may not show it yet, but their contact lists are shifting.

The few brands that succeed under their new masters are ballooning at break-neck paces, as their competition gets wiped out. Instead of those brands increasing their giving to match their growth (something 2% Certified Brands must do to keep their certification), those extra profits skip right past the causes the brand used to support and the lion’s share goes to the private equity firms. And the employees that stayed on rarely see the bonuses they used to, even though they were the ones who keep the lights on. That’s less money going to conservation group memberships, raffles, and banquets from those employees.

Additionally, large brands owned by conglomerates have extra pressure to keep ahead of these hyper-accelerated competitors. This has led to large hunting brands reducing the percentage of funding that they once gave to conservation work. That money is moved to marketing and expensive experimentation in diversifying sales channels. It also has led to a near total collapse of internal marketing programs, like incentivized volunteering and conservation project planning initiatives.

Large outdoor brands that just a year ago gave at least 1% of their gross sales and 1% of employee time (you know, 2% for Conservation) have since pivoted those dollars to orange-washing and that time to mandatory meetings with their corporate overlords.

It is no wonder they cannot keep their employees.

How can we end orange-washing?

This is why we were founded.

Ironically, of the hunting industry companies that signed up to be 2% Certified in our first year (2016) only one is left (Stone Glacier). The others were either sold off for parts by the private equity groups they sold to, or taken deep into orange-washing by their corporate overlords. According to their former employees, many of whom now work at brands that have since certified with us, the thought of being accountable to hunters through a program like ours was abhorrent to the new leadership at those brands. Orange-washing was just too appealing.

And there lies the answer to killing orange-washing: Long-term, hunters have to demand change.

Authentic conservation-minded brands absolutely thrive. It is why they are so appealing to buy out. It is why orange-washing brands spend several times more money on marketing the little charity they do compared to their authentic 2% Certified counterparts.

When hunters stop falling for the orange-washing and start demanding accountability from the hunting industry through their purchasing decisions, orange-washing will not be able to exist.

This is why our simple certification program is so important:

You give the equivalent of 1% of your gross sales and 1% of your employee time to the conservation causes you believe in. You give directly to them. At the end of the year, we audit the giving you did (cash, products, services, NGO discount programs, etc.) and you pay a small dues fee.

In return for your authenticity and accountability, you receive the trust of consumers and our full support in the public arena.

If enough hunting brands (and non-hunting brands that also care about conservation) become 2% Certified, cultural pressure will put an end to the damaging effects of orange-washing.

But hunters have to stop falling for the bullshit.

Just because a brand says they support conservation, just because a brand joins an association of brands that collectively claim they support conservation, just because a brand makes content and products using the word “conservation… it does not mean anything without proof.

This badge is the only independent third-party 501c3 proof that a business gives their time and money to conservation and the future of hunting:

Anything else is just a claim.

Is it “conservation” or is it just Orange-Washing?