Even as The Great Depression of the 1930s forced the people and leaders of the United States to deal with the worst economic times in the country's history, some of the most enduring conservation legislation and programs ever conceived were begun.
These economic conditions, compounded by drought in the country's breadbasket, may have actually brought about exploitation of resources as people settled in the west, resulting in unregulated logging, plowed grasslands, overgrazed deserts and market hunting.
A U.S. Fish and Wildlife history of conservation legislation and programs credits the emergence of a group of financially secure "conservation elite" made up of sportsmen, business and industry leaders and scientists with making wildlife conservation a national issue. These included President Theodore Roosevelt; Aldo Leopold, who is considered the father of wildlife management; and George Bird Grinnell, who founded the first Audubon Society and, along with Roosevelt and others, formed the Boone and Crockett Club, according to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service history of the landmark Pittman-Robertson Act.
During the decade of the 1930s, the movement was taken up by other avid sportsmen and conservationists like J. N. "Ding" Darling, a professional newspaper cartoonist who was President Franklin D. Roosevelt's appointee as the director of the U.S. Biological Survey, the forerunner of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1934, the history states. Ultimately, these and other well-known conservationists joined with state fish and game agencies to form a long-range plan for managing wildlife across the country. This plan was fashioned into legislation titled the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act.
It was introduced into Congress in early 1937 by its chief sponsor in the Senate, Key Pittman of Nevada, and by Congressman A. Willis Robertson of Virginia. The Pittman-Robertson Act became law when President Franklin Roosevelt signed it on Sept. 2, 1937.
The first distribution of money to states through the new law came in 1939, and over the next 68 years more than $4.7 billion has been made available to all 50 states and five U.S. commonwealths for conservation purposes, according to 2005 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service figures.
The true test of the act's effectiveness, however, may be that it has rarely been amended, said Gary Moody, Alabama's wildlife section chief who doubles as the state's federal aid funds coordinator.
"The brilliance of Pittman-Robertson is that, even though it became law 70 years ago, it has not been changed fundamentally and it is still doing what Congress wanted it to do," he said. "We consider it here to be the single most important piece of conservation legislation ever passed."
Moody said many people do not know that the act did not implement a new tax but simply extended an existing 10 percent tax on ammunition and firearms that Congress was thinking of abolishing.
Today, that tax stands at 11 percent. In the early 1970s, the Pittman-Robertson Act was amended to also include a 12.4 percent tax on archery-related equipment and a 10 percent tax on handguns, Moody said.
"It really is amazing to think that, even in the midst of some of the worst economic times we'd ever seen, that people on a national level had the vision to see the importance of taking the proper actions then on behalf of the wildlife resources of the country to ensure they were properly managed for future generations," Moody said. "Its passage changed the landscape of wildlife management and marked the tip of the iceberg in the collective scientific research and survey of our wildlife that is still ongoing today."
Before Pittman-Robertson, Moody said, states could use the tax money for any purpose. After the act's passage, the money had to be used for wildlife restoration programs as part of a long-range management plan each state had to have approved by the USFWS in order to qualify for funding.
"The beauty of the act is that it allows each state to tailor a management plan that works best for them," he said.
Moody said contrary to what most people believe, the money is not paid up front but is reimbursed to the state upon completion of a project at a 3-to-1 ratio.
"For every dollar we spend on the cost of a project, we get reimbursed $3 from our maximum share," Moody said. "This is another excellent part of the act because it keeps states from doing something they aren't supposed to do with the money and it keeps it out of the hands of politicians. There have been several attempts to raid the wildlife restoration account on the national level, but they have all failed horribly."
Moody said Pittman-Robertson is vital to the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, which gets no money from the state's general fund and relies on license sales to provide its operating budget.
"Pittman-Robertson has been the backbone of our wildlife programs since its first year," he said. "Early on, it provided money for our first professional biologists who collected the baseline data on our wildlife. Before that, we knew very little about what Alabama had."
The list of other projects Moody said Pittman-Robertson makes possible in Alabama are the restoration of deer and turkey populations, the operation of the state's wildlife management areas and shooting ranges, the hunter education program, the land acquisition program and the landowner assistance program.
One of the non-game projects people in Alabama do know about is the bald eagle restoration project, which, along with successes across the country, resulted in the species being taken off the endangered list.
Moody said it is "scary" to think what the states' wildlife resources would be like if Pittman-Robertson had not passed.
"If each state had to fend for itself, I believe you would possibly have never seen wildlife management in the professional ranks because there would be no inducement for colleges to train biologists," he said.Everything Alabama
