A group of men stand birdwatching. (Ryan Hagerty/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/Wikimedia

If the title of this gets you to scratching your head, think again. A paper recently published in the Journal of Wildlife Management discusses the similarities of both communities in their commitment to conservation practices.   

“My colleagues and I wondered how rural people who are outdoor recreationists value their natural resources compared to those who are not outdoor recreationists. We found that, as co-author Ashley Dayer put it, ‘there is hope for conservation in rural communities, through both binoculars and bullets,'” writes co-author Caren Cooper, assistant director of the Biodiversity Research Lab at the North Carolina Museum of Natural History. 

Cooper reviews the study findings in a guest blog for Scientific American today. She says both communities do their part for conservation in practice and spending, though birdwatchers are sometimes perceived otherwise. The study of rural upstate New York resident also found that sometimes the hunter and birdwatcher are the very same person.

Read more: Birdwatchers, Hunters Train Their Scopes on Conservation.