The first bill to come out of the new U.S. House of Representatives was a budget bill (HR 1) that attempts to get spending under control by instituting massive cuts, including approximately $2 billion in conservation programs. The bill reduces to zero the North American Wetlands Conservation Act (NAWCA) Fund, through which DU has helped deliver more than three dollars for conservation for every dollar appropriated by Congress. The Land and Water Conservation Fund is reduced by 80 percent. 

Grants to state agencies to help keep wildlife off the threatened and endangered species list are eliminated. And the bill has language that prohibits the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Environmental Protection Agency from rectifying the confusion, caused by two U.S. Supreme Court decisions, that now exists in administering wetland regulations under the Clean Water Act. 

Let me be clear. We at Ducks Unlimited are well known for fiscally conservative viewpoints. But we do not intend to sit idly by while programs that make a clear profit for the U.S. taxpayer are slashed under the pretense of getting spending under control. 

Allow me to elaborate. The entire budget appropriation from Congress for on-the-ground conservation each year is barely $5 billion. That includes about $2 billion in Farm Bill conservation programs as well as funding from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, and National Marine Fisheries Service. 

According to the USFWS, $14 billion is returned to the federal treasury each year through income taxes from jobs directly supported by hunting and fishing. This doesn't even begin to consider the positive economic impacts generated by the $80-billion-per-year hunting and fishing industry, or the taxes and income produced by other outdoor activities that depend on hunters and anglers securing habitat for public use. 

The Wildlife Restoration Act and Sport Fish Restoration Act were passed at the behest of industry with the support of hunters, shooters, anglers, and boaters to authorize a tax on the equipment used in these activities to raise revenue for conservation. These funds are passed through the USFWS each year to state fish and wildlife agencies so they can manage their natural resources. Hunting and fishing license revenues, along with these funds, are the only reason many states can continue their fish and wildlife conservation work. 

In my last year as director of the USFWS, we transferred $1 billion to the states. License sales, again paid by hunters and anglers, amounted to nearly $2 billion across the United States. Even by conservative estimates, the federal treasury gets four dollars back from hunters and anglers for every dollar invested in habitat conservation. Add to that the minimum three-to-one investment made by the private sector to match federal NAWCA expenditures, and the numbers are even more impressive. Clearly, eliminating these investments makes no sense.

All of us who are dedicated to conservation must stand up and be heard. The current budget debate is for fiscal year 2011. The budget for fiscal year 2012 has just been proposed. This isn't over by a long shot, but neither are we. Contact your members of Congress and demand the same kind of fiscal analysis each of us do for our own households. Conservation has always paid for itself. If we lose sight of this, we run the risk of losing the precious natural resources that sustain us, and our values, as hunters and anglers. That's a loss we can't afford to take.