March 2014 Edition | Volume 68, Issue 3
Published since 1946
Seventh Annual Fish & Wildlife Business Summit Scheduled for April
The 2014 Fish & Wildlife Business Summit is scheduled for April 28-30 in Dania Beach, Florida, and hosted by Perko, Inc., reports the Wildlife Management Institute. It is the seventh meeting of industry, agency, and NGO leaders who are focused on raising awareness and improving, if necessary, the Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program. The summit is a result of state fish and wildlife agency and sporting industry leaders recognizing in the early 2000's that they needed to better communicate for a productive partnership.
The partnership between industry, state and federal fish and wildlife agencies, and the hunting, angling, and boating public dates back to 1937, when an excise tax on firearms and ammunition, paid into the U.S. treasury, was set to expire. Firearms and ammunition industry leaders instead petitioned Congress to keep the 11 percent excise tax in place and to permanently dedicate it to the restoration and recovery of wildlife in our country. Senator Key Pittman (Nev.) and Congressman A. Willis Robertson (Va.) sponsored the successful amendment and thus anchored the era of modern wildlife conservation with a stable funding source. Senator Edwin Johnson (Colo.) and Congressman John Dingell Sr. (Mich.) followed suit in 1950 by establishing a similar excise tax on angling equipment. Subsequent amendments to both laws in the 1970's and 80's brought motorboat fuel tax (Wallop-Breaux Amendment), archery equipment, pistols, and pistol ammunition into the fold. Collectively forming what is known as the Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration (WSFR) Program, the excise taxes from these laws and their amendments have delivered more than $16 billion of conservation work across the landscape of North America.
"The fuel that allows us to implement the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation is the WSFR Program," commented Jon Gassett, WMI's industry liaison and southeast region representative who is coordinating the meeting. "It is vital that the industry that pays these taxes supports this model and that the agencies that receive the funds appreciate the role of industry."
In 2006, state, federal, and industry leaders gathered for the first time in many decades in order to improve their working relationship. The goal was to continue to assess the programs that deliver WSFR funds to agencies and to improve programmatic alignment between state and federal leaders and industry counterparts. These Industry-State Coalition meetings have continued since 2006 under what is now referred to as the Fish & Wildlife Business Summit.
If you are a leader in the conservation field, have ties to the Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program and would like to attend the Summit, please contact Jon Gassett. (jg)
Goals of the Fish & Wildlife Business Summit
- Enhanced and strengthened partnerships and cooperation between state fish and wildlife agencies and industry trade groups and manufacturers.
- Continued long-term social and economic benefits through increased recruitment and retention of hunters, shooters, anglers, and boaters
- Maintain a reliable source of revenue to state fish and wildlife agencies from federal excise taxes on arms and ammunition, manufactured tackle, motorboat fuel, and other sporting goods subject to federal excise tax.
- Ensure that state license revenues only be used by the state fish and wildlife agencies by maintaining the connection to excise tax funds and by highlighting the connection to legislators and governors through proclamations and resolutions.
- Educate industry, conservation partners, federal and state agency staff and participants (hunters, shooters, anglers and boaters) on the excise tax program and its importance to the future of the various sports.
- Better inform participants and the public about how sportsmen have paid for the bulk of conservation in the United States.
- Create a shared vision of success between the USFWS, state fish and wildlife agencies, and industry that will help focus more time and energy on the future work under the excise tax program.
- Minimize or eliminate potentially controversial and divisive issues among industry and federal and state partners.
- Ensure that there is fairness in the application and enforcement of excise tax among manufacturers and the first sales point in the United States.
- Build relationships between state fish and wildlife agency directors and manufacturers located within their state or stimulate enhanced relationships between state directors and manufacturers.
- Provide pro-active measures and solutions to industry and the states to better meet future conservation challenges.
- Provide assistance to state agency directors in developing best management practices and a more user-friendly business environment for constituents.
- Provide state agencies with assistance in planning events, historical information, success stories, photos, fact sheets, videos, and links to social media related to the excise tax program.
- Assist with the creation and/or improvement of state level grassroots coalitions using electronic media in order to better communicate conservation issues and needs to end users.
- Increased communication on industry-state partners by facilitating quarterly conference calls to discuss emerging issues of interest to both parties.
- Expansion of informational brochures such as "Hunting Works for America" and firearms safety information through states to appropriate audiences.