Fish and Wildlife Agency Digital Experience Index: Individual Agency Website Assessment and Enhancement Reporting to Improve Recruitment, Retention, and Reactivation

When a hunting incident occurs, first responders and law enforcement officers are often called to the scene.  Whether or not these individuals are certified to investigate a hunting incident comes down to their ability to attend the Hunting Incident Investigation Academy (HIIA), currently offered through a partnership with the International Hunter Education Association – USA (IHEA-USA) and the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC).  It is vitally important to the future of hunting that the Conservation Industry continues to train Conservation Law Enforcement Officers and Game Wardens to assess whether an incident is related to hunting accurately or it is not.  Proper recording of these incidents provides insights into trends in safety and leads to the creation of safety standards delivered through Hunter Education, thus providing each generation of new hunters with education to create safer days in the field.  The program is specifically designed to train wildlife law enforcement officers to investigate and report hunting incidents accurately.  As this is a program of the IHEA-USA, the Academy also covers the importance of the North American Model and the connection between incident reports, the standards of hunter education that are created by examining these incidents, and the resulting reciprocity for hunting license purchases, the standards provide when included in Hunting Education curriculums. The academy is run by wildlife officers with special skill sets and expertise in this discipline.   With very few exceptions, this Academy has been delivered once or twice per year to nearly 40 officers since 1993.  Fourteen different states have hosted the Academy during that time. Host requirements, location availability, academy operation costs, and travel costs have made it difficult to reach more officers. For the last two years, dozens of interested officers have been turned away from participating due to challenges in sourcing new instructors and the ability to coordinate more than two training opportunities each year.  A new scalable model involving blended learning is set to launch in 2024 to help agencies deliver their own blended learning Academy training with the help of HIIA Certified Trainers.  States will be expected to choose two officers to become these certified trainers and send them to a Train the Trainer (TTT) event in Missouri in 2024.  This grant proposal seeks funding to cover the travel, accommodations, and equipment costs of officers from four State Agencies in each AFWA Region to attend the first TTT in 2024. With 16 states and 32 officers qualified to deliver the new blended learning Academy format in their home states, expectations are that the number of newly certified wildlife officers will surpass the previous 30 years within the next 3.   Several state agencies have already expressed an interest in sending officers to the first TTT in Missouri next year.  These include the following:  CA, CO, MO, IA, MI, IN, CT, MD, TN, NC, MS, and SC.