It’s called ‘Partner With A Payer, a national initiative that sheds much-needed light on the vital link between manufactures, hunters and anglers, state agencies and how that partnership pays for wildlife management, habitat and conservation in America.
Excise taxes on guns, ammunition and archery equipment generated by the Pittman-Robertson Act of 1937 combine with excise taxes on fishing equipment, boat engines and fuel from the Dingell-Johnson Act of 1950 to provide more than $1 billion a year to support fish and wildlife.
The website includes a small section on wildlife management, specifically elk in West Virginia.
“In the 1870s, West Virginia’s last native elk disappeared, but in 2015 the state’s Division of Natural Resources reintroduced the species, using more than $6 million from excise taxes to conserve a 10,852-acre property for elk habitat and to research, tag and transplant the animals. Elk are just one of 500 mammals and birds studied and managed with Wildlife Restoration funds.”
RMEF provided funding and volunteer manpower to help with the successful restoration of elk to their historic West Virginia range.
Go here for more information.
(Photo source: Wyoming Game and Fish Department)