Subject: Re: Non-Hunting funding
Date: Oct 05 21:12:40 1997
From: Don Baccus - dhogaza at pacifier.com


At 10:25 PM 10/5/97 -0400, you wrote:

>Why feel funny doing a wildlife recovery program from a tax on "guns and
>ammunition".

While I hate to speak to others, it probably feels funny because the premise
of the tax was to conserve game species. If it were to pass today, it would
probably be written in more specific fashion. When it was passed, though, in
the bird world it appeared that hunting - practiced by a much larger
percentage
of the population than today - combined with a lack of protected habitat (like
close to none) meant that game species were up the creek without a refuge.

Remember that the first refuges were created by executive order by Teddy,
for non-game species. Three Rocks Cape NWR. Klamath NWR. Malheur NWR.
Pelican Island, FL (the first, actually) NWR. These were to control market
hunting. In Teddy's time, it wasn't clear that sports hunting was a threat
compared to market hunting (which included means other than shooting to kill
their prey, among other things). Sports hunting was done by dirt-poor
farmers
who were uncontrollable by the weak fed and state governments of the day, or
by the handful of filthy rich who, no matter how vile their approach to the
sports, couldn't really harm them on a species-survival level.

But, times have changed. Our population has grown to the point where habitat
loss is the primary contributor to species decline, not organized market
hunting
(organized market hunting couldn't even get off the ground, today, with our
limited
habitat, IMO). Pittman-Robertson or whatever it's called was
ground-breaking in
its recognition of the importantance of habitat preservation.

Work on non-game species funded by P-R dollars is great, but we should all
recognize
it is funded that way because in many cases there are no alternative.
There are no
birder dollars, or photo-hunter (that's me!) dollars, or
gawd-I-love-to-see-geese-fly-over-
Love-Canal urban dollars.

That's a very good reason to feel funny. Scott shouldn't feel funny
because hunter
dollars pays for his work. Scott should (and, I hypothesize, does) feel
funny because
the only dollars available for his work are *hunter dollars*.

Because the rest of us haven't stepped up to the plate.



- Don Baccus, Portland OR <donb at rational.com>
Nature photos, on-line guides, and other goodies at
http://donb.photo.net