FWS Announces Nearly $65 Million to Pacific Region States for Fish and Wildlife Conservation Projects

I think it is about time that a group forms, which is simply and strictly devoted to insuring that these funds go where they are intended by law to go.

As it stands now, very, very little of the taxes we as hunters and fishermen have paid go to ACTUAL restoration of WILDLIFE and FISH …..!!!!! And yet, this is the reason the law was instituted in the first place.

If we, as hunters and fishermen, would simply dedicate a nominal fee to a reputable organization whose sole purpose was to insure this law was used properly, we would have tremendous clout! As witness how the NRA has protected so many of the rights we would have lost with them representing us.
The following was taken from :
http://www.newwest.net/index.php/topic/article/hunters_shooters_and_pr_money/C41/L41/
“The Pitman-Robertson Act placed an 11 percent excise tax on “sporting arms and ammunition,” which includes re-loading equipment, but excludes only “machine guns and short-barreled shotguns.” In 1970, Congress amended the Act to place a 10 percent tax on handguns and archery equipment, part of which goes to hunter education and to develop shooting ranges for archers and all gun owners, not just hunters.

Gun and archery manufacturers, with some exceptions, supported these taxes. Yes, an industry supported taxes on its own products–and benefited greatly from it.

Most avid hunters and gun owners know about PR money, but some don’t because it’s sort of a stealth tax. The manufacturers pay it on the wholesale price of their products, and It never shows up on the receipt or bill of sale. I have talked to some hunters who have hunted for many years and were unaware of it.

The Internal Revenue Service collects PR money puts it in the U.S. Treasury. Then, it goes to state wildlife agencies, which match the PR money with state license fees and pay for wildlife research, management and habitat acquisition. The states get three PR dollars for every dollar of license fees.

This is hardly chump change. According to Nicholas Throckmorton of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), the federal agency in charge of apportioning out the money, more than $5 billion has been raised for wildlife restoration and matched with about $1.3 billion in license fees since the Act passed. That’s enough to pay for about six weeks of the Trillion Dollar War in Iraq.

Now, how do we get it started?