TO ALL NATURE PROTECTORS, OUTDOORS RECREATIONISTS, ENVIRONMENTALISTS, AND BUSINESS, We Must Kill the Proposed Tax Called “Teaming with Wildlife”
By John Eberhart
Abbreviation Table:
P-R Pittman-Robertson tax on lethal weapons and ammunition
FWS U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of the U.S. Dept. of the Interior
DNR Georgia Department of Natural Resources
WRD Wildlife Resources Division of the Georgia DNR
WMA Wildlife Management Area – public land controlled by a state game
department as a shooting gallery for hunters
TWW Teaming with Wildlife, or the Wildlife Diversity Funding
Initiative –
WDI proposed tax scheme
Thanks to you, wild, free animals are gradually winning the war being
waged against them. In a nationwide AP poll, 51% of the respondents
indicated that sports hunting is always wrong. In a Fish and Wildlife
Service survey, 62% said there were “A Lot” of nimrods violating hunting
laws. An outdoors columnist wondered, “What if the general public knew
that some hunters shoot pet dogs?” Panicked, state game agencies (FWS
and their political constituency of hunters and trappers) are rounding
up the wagons.
The director of Georgia’s game agency, the WRD within the DNR wrote,
“The child you take hunting today may save hunting for tomorrow.”
“Hunters have declined as a percentage of the population by 25 percent
over the last 15 years,” the WRD says. “We’re exploring every way we can
to salvage hunting.”
Here is their vehicle to achieve their goal – “Teaming with Wildlife”
and the “Fish and Wildlife Diversity Funding Initiative” are two of the
plan’s names. State game agencies want Congress to bail them out of
their financial problems by taxing everybody who takes pictures, watches
birds, hikes, bikes, reads, climbs, paddles and camps. The “Wildlife
Conservation Enhancement Act of 1996” is the title of a bill drafted to
make it happen. The IRS would collect an excise tax of up to 5% on such
goods as film, cameras and lenses; coolers; sunglasses; bird houses,
feeders and seed; bicycles; shorts, jackets and hiking boots; backpacks;
field guides and nature books; Scout supplies; binoculars; sleeping bags
and tents; compasses; canoes, kayaks and paddles; lanterns, fuel and
cookware; climbing gear; all-terrain vehicles and more. The FWS Federal
Aid Division would receive the revenue and parcel out the money as
grants to fund 75% of wildlife-related projects in the state game
departments (the state treasuries would match these with 25% of the
cost), ostensibly for projects to “manage” nongame (the wild species not
legally hunted, fished, or trapped) and for wildlife “education.” That
means that an extra $350 million per year would surge into state game
agencies and Federal Aid, the bureaucracies that have caused the present
wildlife mess.
Understandably, outdoor-products companies resist the tax. Congress
probably would not pass it with them opposed. That’s why there’s a quiet
campaign to accumulate momentum for TWW. Promoters allege they have
signed up 1,000 groups in support. Hunters are being urged to write
company CEOs, pushing them to accept the tax. Hunters in Georgia alone
are claimed to have sent 1,000 letters to companies such as Kodak,
L.L.Bean, Coleman, Nixon, Pentax, Johnson Camping, and The Nature
Company.
Wildlife exploiters are demanding that the majority of people be
taxed, but as with all hucksters, they don’t state the demand so
plainly. TWW is like a hook or a trap, and to succeed, a hook or a trap
has to be obscured. It needs a decoy, muddy water, or bait. TWW’s bait
is that the suggestion of better care for nongame species, especially
endangered species and their habitat needs, since public interest in
these species has never been greater.
Some of the unwary, seeing only the indistinct, dangling bait, will
bite down on it. Our duty to wild animals is to see through the scheme
instead, and sink TWW.
“The chief causes of extinction are hunting and destruction of
habitat,” began the Senate Commerce Subcommittee’s report on the 1973
Endangered Species Act. Some TWW pushers have tried to undercut the ESA.
Some unsuccessfully fought passage of the ESA’s forerunner, the 1972
Marine Mammal Protection Act that prohibits Americas from killing seals,
sea otters, dolphins and whales.
As for depleted species inland, the best way to preserve them is to
leave them alone on big tracts of suitable, undisturbed, unpolluted land
and with fresh water, the President’s Council on Environmental Quality
stated in its Eleventh Annual Report. However, with few exceptions,
state game departments, as they have been organized for 58 years,
haven’t done that. Leaving life alone doesn’t make them money. Logging
and selling licenses to hunt makes money. (Many people believe that deer
need big woods for living places. Such forests do harbor deer, but not
as densely as hunters want. It is in logging’s weedy, broken aftermath
that food supplies for deer, and consequently deer numbers, explode.)
The agencies’ structure must change FIRST before they will represent
all the people proportionately, before decision-making can become an
open, public process. LESS MONEY, DOWNSIZING, and PRESSURE will change
the structure. For example, WRD has dropped its one full-time furbearer
biologist position now that 99.996% of Georgians don’t buy trapping
licenses. Shrinking dollars work. In many states, ballot initiatives
aren’t available. Appointees and administrative careerists can’t be
thrown out at the next election. Pro-wildlife bills in state
legislatures are referred to hunter-run game committees for burial.
TWW is a scam. Who would profit? A nongame front would hide a
backdoor hunting-land frenzy.
“One thing we must make crystal clear,” the Congressional Sportsmen’s
Caucus wrote in a letter, “hunting and fishing must be retained as
management and conservation tools on any public lands that might be
acquired through the use of these funds, whether the lands were
purchased, leased, or otherwise came under public control. This would
also include any lands controlled by groups that secured grants from
this fund for conservation practices.
Look out for lies and canards in this debate.
TWW would reinforce – and indeed it is patterned after – the most
nature-destroying of U.S. laws, the 1937 Federal Aid in Wildlife
Restoration Act (16 U.S.C. 669-6691, 50 CFR Part 80), commonly known as
the Pittman-Robertson Act (P-R). Since P-R was enacted, it has collected
over 1.7 billion dollars of federal excise taxes on firearms,
ammunition, bows and arrows, and states have matched this with $600
million. FWS Federal Aid, like the state agencies, is hunters at the top
and hunters at the bottom. Federal Aid runs P-R; and it would administer
TWW also. To understand how P-R, Federal Aid and state agencies work in
tandem is to know one reason why TWW must be defeated. Wrecking habitats
for one set of wildlife (nongame, esp. late succession and
forest-interior species) in order to manipulate other animals (game,
such as deer) into overpopulation for hunters is what state agencies and
Federal aid do. Fragmentation of forests into patches is chiefly why 90
Georgia bird species’ populations are declining; and some are
collapsing. More bird species, and more individual birds, live in a
forest as it ages. Much nongame cannot live where old, extensive woods
have been disturbed for game and timber production.
Agencies like WRD could get out of the deer-growing business, but
that would mean less income. DNR game managers have described Wildlife
Management Areas as “deer factories pumping animals out into the
county.” Georgia’s deer herd quadrupled from 1974 to 1988.
Congratulating the panel that oversees WRD and all of the natural
resources department, the DNR magazine wrote, “major accomplishments for
the [DNR] Board [since 1972] include…the growth of the deer herd, which
has provided for liberalization of deer quotas and bag limits.” A P-R
report echoed, “Great progress has been made in the state WMA system to
increase deer harvest and hunters [from 1977 to 1985]…[P]resent
management…[results] in high deer populations, a situation that is often
necessary for high hunter satisfaction.” Farmers have complained to
their representatives of deer damage to crops in such numbers that
agriculture interests have worked on legislation to take control of
wildlife from [WRD] and put it in the hands of elected officials.
In California, the Little Hoover commission examined 361 boards and
panels embedded in that state’s government. They concluded that the
boards “operate to a large degree autonomously and outside the normal
checks and balances of representative government…The lack of control may
cost the state not only dollars, but also wasted resources, duplicated
efforts, and the adoption of policies that may run counter to the
general public’s interest…There’s no coordinated means of reviewing and
providing the oversight necessary to ensure they are functioning as
intended”
Recently, three TWW backers (Georgia governor Zell Miller, his WRD,
and FWS Federal Aid) added 80,000 acres to a state killing-field system
already 10 times the size of state parks. P-R project W-36, entitled
“State Wildlife Development,” is used to control about 70 Wildlife
Management Areas in Georgia.
In the following scenario, the land grab has been generalized to
illustrate one way in which TWW would be used: with tax revenues from a
state’s 93-98% nonhunter majority and exploiting the public’s wishes for
nongame, endangered species and their habitats, a wildlife agency would
acquire land allegedly to “protect” it. The department would then add
the property to an existing P-R project, or it would apply to Federal
Aid for a POR project grant, in any dollar amount, for the site - and
would receive the money. The tract would then become public hunting land
(a Wildlife Management Area) and perhaps a de facto state government
tree farm also. Promises that this would happen are empty and cannot be
enforced. Hunting would dominate other land use. Activities such as
old-growth preservation and designation as a park or a wilderness would
be forbidden. A P-R rule requires this. Hikers, birders, campers,
mountain bikers, canoeists, and horseback riders, and other general
taxpayers would be confined in the use of their land, yet clear-cutting,
snaring predators, burning, disking the soil and spraying herbicides
could never be limited; these are game management practices done for
hunters.
Let’s look a P-R, a state agency, and FWS Federal Aid in action.
Officials persuaded Georgians to buy the fourth largest of the state’s
barrier islands, Sapelo Island, to “protect” it. In reality, citizens
got a place where wild animals are produced to be killed. Realizing this
too late, citizens firmly requested a change in how the land was to be
used, but because of a P-R rule, they found themselves at a dead-end.
In 1968, the State of Georgia purchased the northern two-thirds of
11-mile-long Sapelo (about 10,000 acres) from tobacconist R.J. Reynolds’
widow. The seller’s attorneys negotiated for 18 months, insisting that
the land be left in its native condition. Sadly however, P-R funds were
combined with general state revenue in the sale. The property’s annual
operating budget continues to contain P-R money, for Sapelo’s north end
is a Wildlife Management Area, one unit within P=R project W-36. WRD’s
predecessor, the State Game and Fish Commission, arranged hunts
immediately upon takeover. In 1970, it stocked wild turkey eggs for
hatching on Sapelo. When raccoons ate the eggs, what was management’s
response? Strychnine-injected eggs.
Last season, deer were living at Sapelo at a density of 50 per square
mile; the hunter success rate was 76 percent. WRD receives $200,000 per
year from the state treasury and P-R to burn a third of the acres and to
deforest Sapelo in order to grow deer. WRD records show that in 11
years, it removed a woodpile 4’ high by 4’ wide by 78 miles long! That’s
79 million board feet, or 141,400 tons of trees. There was a public
outcry when the Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran the Sapelo timber story
on the front page of a 1992 Sunday edition. A Journal editor wrote:
“Imagine you owned a coastal island and you were restricted from
visiting it, but others were allowed on it. You’d be furious. Well, you
do own an island and you are discouraged from venturing to it, though an
exclusive group of people enjoys its natural beauty…Sapelo is public
property, bought and maintained by taxpayers. Care to explore it? Sorry,
Sapelo is restricted, controlled almost as if it were a military base…If
[WRD] wants to prove it is managing Sapelo in the public interest, we
the owners, should get to see the results of the splendid job it is
doing. After all, [WRD] doesn’t have anything to hide, does it?”
Sapelo timber profits do not go state or federal treasuries. Pursuant
to a P-R rule, the proceeds flow back into P-R project W-36 to pay for
game management around the state. Georgians taxed to pay for destruction
have only one way to stop the chainsaws: to purchase a similar island
(impossible for several reasons) and surrender it to FWS Federal Aid!
This dead end, the rigid P-R rule of in-kind replacement of lands “has
been applied often and is rigorously supported by wildlife
professionals.”
Nationally from the 1975 – 1985, game managers in the states logged,
torched, bulldozed, tilled, drained, flooded, and poisoned an area the
size of Indiana. If you express your environmental concerns to the
Secretary of the Interior, you would probably receive a blanket
statement to the effect that there was “no significant environmental
impact.”
In 1937, the forester who invented the pseudoscience of game
management worried that his disciples would ignore nongame as they
lavished attention on species with what he called “gunpowder value.”
That’s what has happened. This is not to say that no animal has ever
derived any benefit, but rather that nongame funding has been a trickle.
Taking all wildlife programs together, only 3 cents of every dollar are
spent for the 97% of wild species not used for hunting, fishing and
trapping. P-R contributes nothing for wildlife law enforcement. Only
about 14% of P-R funds have been spent to buy land.
Is it love of nongame – or of money – that game departments are
displaying as they push TWW? TWW is not needed if the real interest is
nongame. P-R could have been used for nongame since 1937. The P-R law
says it is for “wild birds and mammals,” not “game birds and mammals.”
State game agencies and FWS Federal Aid have shown where their hearts
are. They have had 58 years and $2.3+ billion with which to demonstrate
how much they care for nongame.
Would you please add your group’s name to the coalition opposing TWW?
Georgia Earth Alliance, the American Canoe Association, the Committee to
Abolish Sport Hunting, Adirondack Mountain Club, Alaska Wildlife
Alliance and more than 0 other animal protection, river and
wilderness-oriented environmental organizations are asking for your
help. Tell photo developers, mail order companies, and outdoor-goods
distributors about the tax. Encourage additional products manufacturers
and sellers to stand up for our animals and the environment by fighting
TWW. Politely, firmly tell these companies that they and you already
“pay our share” to support wildlife and public land through general
taxes, that TWW would be an unnecessary and environmentally destructive
subsidy to trappers, hunters, and bureaucrats who plunder everyone’s
public assets, that you are their customer or a prospect considering
purchasing their goods (if you are); and that you would NOT buy products
that bear the tax. The Supreme Court held in 1842 that wildlife belongs
to all the people. No one owns wild animals and public land more than
you do. What sort of future do you propose to them? You weren’t invited
to frame TWW; is it the plan you would envision?
Would you please add your group’s name to the coalition opposing TWW?
Please contact David Jenkins, American Canoe Association, (703)
451-0141; (703) 451-2245 (fax); ACADAVEJ@AOL.COM (email). Read about the
excise tax at www.aca-paddler.org or dash off a postcard to ACA, 7432
Alban Station Blvd # b 226, Springfield VA 22150-2311.
John Eberhart of Georgia Earth Alliance welcomes your suggestions,
comments and questions at (770) 416-4500; GEA7@PRODIGY.COM; or at GEA,
PO Box 1231, Fayetteville, GA 30214-6231.
