This started as an attempt to make a brief point that there are ways of raising funds for conservation work that have been proposed and don't appear to be being followed up on. It sort of grew to include some explanations of why some public lands are required to be open for hunting and fishing.
In the US, there are funding mechanisms for state fish and wildlife agencies that some in the US conservation arena have worked to imitate. As an ecologist working in a state fish and wildlife agency, I've been hearing about how lands are bought for hunting and fishing, and projects supported, staff paid - it makes better sense now I know a bit of the history. I should add that my office receives some of the federal funds and habitat work I do gets included in the agency's federal reimbursement. Not all states include vegetation ecologists, rare species botanists and invertebrate zoologists, or rare vertebrate zoologists in the wildlife envelope. Since the 1930s in the US, much money for hunting and fishing agencies, and some land acquisition has been raised by federal excise taxes on hunting and fishing equipment, put on at the manufacturing level at the request and urging of the hunting community. The Pittman-Robertson (hunting) and Dingell-Johnson (fishing) funds are then apportioned to the states by the numbers of licenses sold and state size, as reimbursement funds. PR was established in the late 1930s, DJ was late 1950s. Each took decades of attempts to go through the US Congress. Much more info on this at the USFWS website http://federalasst.fws.gov/ that has information about the Federal Aid in Wildlife and Federal Aid in Fish Restoration Programs that were created by Pittman-Robertson and Dingell-Johnson (and later Wallop-Breaux) Acts. About 10 years ago, there was a movement called Teaming with Wildlife to apply equivalent taxes to birdseed, binoculars, and other items associated with popular aspects of environmentalism. Although supported by many environmental groups and some in congress, it got sidelined (I'm told the manufacturers didn't like it, and taxes do have a bad name) and a much more modest funding mechanism replaced it (some of the off shore oil money, which also goes to Land and Water Conservation). The result is funding work by state wildlife agencies on animal (inverts are allowed, although I suspect not required) 'species in need of conservation' that are not listed as rare, but are also not hunted (non-game) and their habitats. Teaming With Wildlife website (includes info from each state on how State Wildlife Grant funding is spent) http://www.teaming.com/ I see that the website has info about efforts on Long Term Funding, but doesn't mention the excise tax idea. In addition, in Massachusetts anyway, the hunters and fishers again tax themselves by requiring that everyone buying a hunting or fishing license must purchase a land stamp, the money goes to buy land. Most of the lands so acquired are required to be open to hunting and fishing, although since the rare species focused natural heritage program is in fish and wildlife in Massachusetts, occasionally lands that are inappropriate for hunting have been bought to protect a rare species. Here there are also state bond funds usually available for protecting lands with rare species, but no automatic funding source like the sportsman's licenses. The point here is that the hunting / fishing world worked on their funding and got it for state agencies to buy land and manage wildlife and fisheries. They worked hard to get the funding and maintain it. The model is there for conservation groups to follow up on. Pat ---------------------------------------------------------- Patricia Swain, Ph.D. Community Ecologist Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program Massachusetts Division of Fisheries & Wildlife 1 Rabbit Hill Road Westborough, MA 01581 508-389-6352 fax 508-389-7891 http://www.nhesp.org
