Over the last 30 years, we have had the opposite trend. Our conversion of farmland to wildlife habitat has had a dramatic positive impact on wildlife. My trapper neighbor has seen a more widespread increase in fur bearers as well which I attribute to wider adoption of conservation tillage facilitated by glyphosate-tolerant crops. Even during droughts, we have a lot of water for the wildlife on our place which I believe, in combination with development of dense cover, has kept our wildlife numbers high. The one counter trend is the prevalence of ground-nesting birds which I attribute mostly to high raccoon numbers. I am hoping fur prices will recover to incentivize trapping. I am not against others controlling predator numbers, but personally would like to see their fur go to good use. I have had to remove damaging beaver and muskrats though.
