Members participate at Michigan United Conservation Clubs’ last annual convention in February. The 89-year-old nonprofit has announced it is closing. (Courtesy of Michigan United Conservation Clubs)

(This story was originally published by Bridge Michigan, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization. Visit the newsroom online: bridgemi.com.)

The group that claims to be Michigan’s largest hunting and fishing group has announced it is dissolving.

“It’s not something we wanted to have happen,” Michigan United Conservation Clubs President Stephen Dey said last week. “It was a tough decision by the board to make. For several people, it was quite an emotional decision.”

The 89-year-old nonprofit had shown signs that the end might be near. In late February, it announced it was pausing its camp and magazine operations. On April 20, MUCC said it needed to raise $100,000 or it would be forced to close.

Dey said that between actual and pledged donations, MUCC raised roughly $34,000, about $66,000 short of their stopgap goal. The group stopped accepting membership dues about a week ago, he said, and the board voted for dissolution May 1.

However, Jenae Birchmeier, MUCC’s membership and events director, said staff has been told to continue to accept membership dues, and auto renewals are still active.

Four staff members remain employed, down from around a dozen about a year ago.

Birchmeier said that, despite the nonprofit’s public financial crisis, “everybody was optimistic that we’d make it through the end of the fiscal year” in September.

“We were informed … that they could not consciously ask us to work past May 8 because they could not fund payroll,” she said. “It is a huge loss for the state of Michigan.”

The nonprofit dissolution process, which includes winding down operations and selling off any remaining assets, should be completed by mid-June, Dey said.

The nonprofit was founded in 1937 to defend hunting, fishing, trapping and conservation. It consisted of individual members and affiliated clubs that paid dues to fund its work.

MUCC lobbied, produced a podcast and organized environmental cleanups. It led the petition campaign behind Michigan’s 1976 “bottle bill,” advocated for the creation of the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund in 1984, and, in 2024, filed an unsuccessful lawsuit against state wildlife regulators over a coyote hunting decision it argued wasn’t based on science

“MUCC was always the voice of the Michigander hunter, fisherman, trapper and general outdoorsmen and women. So it’s gonna be a voice that won’t be heard for a while,” Dey said. “Hopefully, someday something will come around to take its place. But it’s a void.”