North Carolina Support for Recovering America’s Wildlife Act

Letter to Members of the North Carolina Congressional Delegation

We, the undersigned North Carolina groups and organizations, support preventing fish and wildlife from becoming endangered by dedicating general treasury funds annually to the federal Wildlife Conservation and Restoration Program. We believe that collaborative conservation is the most effective way to recover wildlife populations and strongly support the bipartisan Recovering America’s Wildlife Act.

Our nation and state have been blessed with a diverse array of fish and wildlife. While some of these species are thriving, many more are facing increasing challenges and are in steep decline. State fish and wildlife agencies have identified 12,000 species nationwide with 457 in North Carolina that are in need of proactive conservation action. With the passage of Recovering America’s Wildlife Act, North Carolina would receive an estimated $26.47 million dollars annually to support species conservation.

At the request of Congress, every state has developed a State Wildlife Action Plan (North Carolina had the first plan in the country) to assess the health of its state’s fish and wildlife and outline conservation actions necessary to sustain them. Time and time again, proactive, collaborative, and voluntary conservation efforts have allowed our nation to recover wildlife species. America has a successful history of bringing wildlife back from the brink of extinction through professional wildlife management combined with collaborative, on-the-ground conservation.  A century ago, prized game species like elk, wood ducks, wild turkeys, bighorn sheep and striped bass were at risk of extinction.  Now these species are largely thriving, because license fees and excise taxes paid by America’s hunters and anglers have been dedicated to the conservation of their habitat.  While collaborative conservation has led to numerous successes, today more than 12,000 wildlife species across our nation are considered “species of greatest conservation need,” as identified by various state fish and wildlife Agencies. These species—such as pollinators, frogs, turtles, songbirds and shorebirds, freshwater mussels, oysters, etc.—often receive neither the attention nor funding sufficient to recover them.

This growing wildlife crisis poses a threat to the vibrant outdoor economy of America and North Carolina. Hunters, anglers, birders, hikers, campers, and backyard wildlife watchers have created a fast-growing outdoor economic base that depends on healthy wildlife populations. Today, the outdoor economy contributes $887 billion to the national economy and $28 billion to our state economy annually, creating 7.6 million direct jobs with 260,000 in North Carolina, and generating $124.5 billion in federal, state, and local tax revenue.

The Blue Ribbon Panel on Sustaining America’s Diverse Fish and Wildlife Resources, comprising industry and conservation leaders, recommended that the best way to recover these species of concern is to build upon the conservation model that has produced the remarkable successes for game species by investing a portion of existing energy revenues in proactive, collaborative, voluntary efforts at the state-level. This should be done through the existing Wildlife Conservation and Restoration Program, as proposed in The Recovery America’s Wildlife Act. This non-regulatory, collaborative approach is a proven means of recovering species and leverages additional funds through innovative public/private partnerships.

Further, by preventing the decline of species so that they do not require the stricter protections of the Endangered Species Act, businesses will be able to operate with more regulatory certainty and reduced risk. As the decline of numerous species and their habitats across the country worsens, preemptive action can reverse this trend and keep species from the critical, yet often costly, “emergency room” measures required by the Endangered Species Act. This will be especially important to rapidly developing states like North Carolina.

Proactive conservation is good for wildlife, good for taxpayers, good for business, and good for North Carolinians. We encourage you to support the protection of our nation’s fish and wildlife heritage by supporting efforts to direct dedicated funding into the Wildlife Conservation and Restoration Program through the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act.

Sincerely,