Revved up about a cause

By Harold Raker
The Daily Item

February 21, 2009 07:37 pm

— Ward Burton would like to see every youngster get the same opportunities that he had. And the 2002 Daytona 500 winner is not talking about winning NASCAR races.
Rather Burton is concerned that many of the youth of today do not know what it is like to enjoy outdoor activities such as hunting and fishing.
His NASCAR success — five Nextel Cup wins and 356 Cup starts — gave Burton the resources and the voice to try to do something about it. In 1996, he founded the nonprofit Ward Burton Wildlife Foundation, an organization aimed at providing outdoors opportunities to the future hunters and fishermen.
Burton, who made an appearance last week at the Eastern Sports and Outdoor Show in Harrisburg, is working through the school system in his native Virginia, something that may take more work to accomplish in Pennsylvania, where most school districts have done away with the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s hunter education programs.
Recalling a recent outing with a seventh grade class from a Virginia middle school, Burton said, “You would not believe the percentage of kids who had never been fishing, or never had seen a beaver swamp or didn’t recognize a raccoon track on a bank, just simple common things.”
He said he is concerned about the loss of the rural culture which, he said, is responsible for today’s young people having what he called “nature deficit disorder.”
He said, “They don’t understand the things that we take for granted because of the way that we were brought up.”
Burton said schools should be teaching children about their environment right along with world history.
“My children know, but there are other kids that are not being influenced that way and it’s really scary when you think about it,” he said. “Who is going to carry on the tradition for us down the road. We have to keep up the fight and it’s got to be done through the school system.”
Burton said organizations like his are doing all they can but they are never going to reach the masses without going into the school system.
Pennsylvania Game Commission spokesman Jerry Feaser said the reason the hunter education courses disappeared from the schools was that the schools, first in urban areas and then throughout the state, either forced the agency’s hand by requiring them to sign waivers guarding them from lawsuits or by banning weapons from school grounds.
“It was an unintended consequence,” Feaser said.
In Virginia, Burton said, the programs are being run by volunteers, of which he is one. “There are a whole hell of a lot of us out there who care about our natural resources and our environment and who care about the next generation,” he said.
The South Boston, Va., native said he had great role models as a youngster, primarily his grandfather and father, and he has passed those traditions onto his own children.
Burton says that although he loves all kinds of outdoor activities and is an avid trapper, he gets more enjoyment from the thrill of others, especially his children.
“When my older son Jeb was 9, he killed his first wild turkey. When I was 9, you didn’t see wild turkey. But having him bag his first turkey with the same gun that I was brought up on, watching that and just coming out and teaching him how to clean it and all that, that was a lot more endurable (memory) than if I’d have done it myself,” he said.
“I’ve always had two passions in life. One was racing. One was outdoors. Growing up racing go-karts as a child in the summer I did everything I could to get out of school and (that included) hunting, and playing in the woods in the winter,” he said.
“When I started having some success in racing, I started trying to figure out how to tie that into the responsibility I feel like we all have for the outdoors. We all have a responsibility to take care of the natural resources,” he said.
Burton is not involved in racing at the moment, but has not ruled out a return to the sport, even this season. He is also helping son Jeb, now 16, pursue a racing career.
Nevertheless, he will never forsake what he believes to be his duty to promote the care of the environment.
“I owe a lot to a lot of people for having success in racing and I may go back into racing sometime in the near future. But, I always held racing was a career and outdoors was a lifetime endeavor. (The outdoors) is not a career, it is a lifetime passion,” he said.
Burton said that if he had not had success in racing, he would probably be living in a log cabin somewhere. “I would be roughing it a little bit more than I do now. The wife and kids don’t like to rough it as much as I do,” he said with a laugh.
Even though the height of Burton’s success is, for the time being, behind him, he said that the foundation is solid and no longer depends on his success in motorsports.
“No endeavor can live depending on a personality or an individual. It has to be a cause,” he said.
Burton’s foundation has been responsible for taking numerous children, many of them with illnesses, into the outdoors.
Moreover, Burton has lent his time and expertise to other organizations with similar goals.
“Certainly mine is not the only one out there and it’s not the only one that’s got a good cause, so if we all work together, we can all be strong and make a difference,” he said.
Burton has had his conflicts with those who oppose his views, most notably People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
“They live in la la land. They live in concrete jungles and they don’t understand where their ancestors came from,” Burton said. “Their ancestors would not have made it if it had not been for fishing and using the natural resource.
“And to tell me that this black belt that I’ve got on is something wrong because it’s leather, I think they are definitely barking up a tree that I think most Americans don’t have any sympathy for.”
Burton is a member of the National Rifle Association, the antithesis of PETA, but he concedes, “Sometimes you have to have extremists on one side and extremists on the other.”
Burton said he has no problem with gun registration, but believes there is no reason to require the registration of ammunition. “I don’t think we need to go that far,” he said.
He added, “If you could get those folks out and let them walk in my moccasins for a day, they would see it is a whole lot more than just harvesting game. They would see that from being influenced to hunt and fish and do the outdoor activities that your role models taught you to do, you had so much fun, it turned you into a conservationist when you got older.
“I get enjoyment in trying to make a difference and having fun outdoors, and you’ve always had a good day whether your bagged (game) or not,” he said.
As for gun rights, Burton said he is not too concerned about it because, “I don’t feel like they are going to make all of us criminals. They are certainly not going to get the ones I have or the ones I am about to get, and I don’t think you or your neighbors are going to give up their handguns or their rifles, either.”
But Burton might just be a little more difficult to catch.

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