by Dave Workman, Senior Editor
This year marks the 75th anniversary of a federal program that truly defines the term “success story,” and the main beneficiaries have been wildlife and the hunters and shooters who continue to provide millions of dollars for habitat and conservation.
In September 1937, then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Pittman-Robertson (P-R) Act, also known as the Federal Aid to Wildlife Restoration program. It took effect the following year, and in the decades since, this special federal excise tax has provided billions of dollars to state wildlife agencies for habitat improvement, game conservation and enhancement, range development and hunter education programs. More than four million acres of habitat have been purchased with P-R funds, and tens of millions more acres of private land are managed for wildlife through landowner agreements.
It is an excise tax on firearms and ammunition, and hunting-related equipment including bows and arrows. The funds are administered by the US Fish & Wildlife Service and are annually apportioned to the states, with about 2% remaining with FWS for administrative costs.
Various on-line histories of the P-R Act estimate that hunters and shooters spend approximately $10 billion annually on firearms, ammunition and equipment. This generates somewhere between $175 and $325 million in excise tax revenues for the P-R program. There have been boom years when the revenue has been very high, such as 1994 and 1995, when Americans flocked to buy handguns and then semi-auto rifles and shotguns due to passage of the Brady Law and the Clinton-era ban on so-called “assault weapons.” The same phenomenon has been in progress since before the election of Barack Obama, allowing the firearms industry to remain healthy during a period of financial downturn for other industries and the economy in general.
According to Hannibal Bolton, assistant director for the FWS Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program in Washington, DC, the celebration of this Diamond Anniversary kicked off at the annual Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show in Las Vegas, NV in mid-January, and there are activities and events scheduled throughout the year.
Steve Sanetti, president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) told TGM that these funds are becoming more critical than ever in today’s economy of shrinking state budgets, because wildlife agencies are depending upon them more to maintain programs.
While it may not be widely known, hunters and shooters provide the lion’s share of operating funds for those state agencies. At the state level, their license, tag and permit fees pump millions of dollars into the budget, and at the federal level, their continuing purchase of firearms and ammunition, including handguns and semiautomatic sport-utility rifles—the so-called “assault weapons” that are demonized by anti-gunners—feed millions of dollars more to the states through the Pittman-Robertson program.
Named for its primary sponsors, the late Nevada Sen. Key Pittman and Rep. Absalom Willis Robertson of Virginia, the Federal Aid to Wildlife Restoration program was so successful that it served as the model for a federal sportfishing restoration program created in 1950 called the Dingell-Johnson Act. Through the end of this fiscal year, according to Bolton, some $12 billion has gone back to the states thanks to these programs.
In the 1930s, sportsmen quickly got behind the idea of taking an existing 10% tax on sporting firearms and ammunition, and making that a dedicated fund to go directly to the Department of Interior rather than into the general fund. Each year, hundreds of millions of dollars are divided among the states and those monies have been used occasionally with private source grants from such organizations as the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Mule Deer Foundation, Ducks Unlimited and other hunting/conservation organizations to acquire critical habitat and do other projects.
Bolton told TGM that the P-R program is a prime example of a “user pays” scenario, although non-consumptive users who do not hunt or contribute to the fund also benefit. Wildlife and bird watchers are frequent users of public lands secured and maintained with the help of P-R funding, and non-game species also benefit.
When game habitat is acquired and preserved, other non-game species benefit. Shore birds and song birds live in the same habitat as waterfowl and/or upland species like wild turkeys, grouse, doves, pheasant and chukar or Hungarian partridge, depending upon the region. Furbearers, rodents, muskrats, squirrels and chipmunks, and predators live in the same areas as deer and elk, caribou, moose, black and grizzly bears, again depending upon the region. No wild habitat is devoid of all other life just because it might be maintained as deer winter range, for example, by some state agency.
Indeed, P-R funds have been critical in the restoration and enhancement of certain game species, including whitetail deer and elk, wild turkeys and pronghorns.
Hunting and sportsman/wildlife organizations are zealously protective of P-R funds, and when it was revealed that millions of dollars of federal wildlife money had been misused during the Clinton administration, these organizations raised a ruckus. Congressman Don Young (R-AK) spearheaded hearings into the controversy after whistleblowers came forward. Nowadays, sportsmen organizations also fulfill a watchdog role, keeping an eye on how these funds are used, and state agencies must meet certain requirements in order to utilize P-R funds.
“Hunters and shooters…are the best conservationists,” Sanetti observed.
And Bolton noted that programs protecting and enhancing wildlife have kept many species off of the Endangered Species list, which is an accomplishment in itself.
In the final analysis, the Pittman-Robertson Act appears to have been a stroke of genius that has been a cornerstone for wildlife management across the nation.
