Would you pay a special tax for wildlife?

[bownut]

Quite a few good posts and comments above. I too would support an excise tax program for wildlife specific uses. However, the U.S. set their system up in a different time, with a different government and public culture, I'm not so sure it would pass or work as well as it does if they (or us) tried it now.

Instead, how about everyone donates more to the wildlife conservation organizations of their choosing? That should maximize the chances money is spent in the way it's intended. For full disclosure, and I say this somewhat embarrassingly, I have not donated any money to such a group before, but this thread has motivated me to look into doing so.

Does anyone have any experience or relationship with pre-existing conservation groups (those below or more) and could recommend what would be worth looking into for BC specific donations?
https://www.wildsheepsociety.com/wil...p-information/
http://www.bcwf.net

Also, anything for fresh or salt water fishing as well?

Wold Sheep Society Of BC has been doing some great work and continues to get the best bang for the buck. Thats one group you can feel good about.
Chris Barker puts his boots to the ground like no one else..

Listen to this interview.
https://journalofmountainhunting.com/episode76/

[Lugg]

Out of curiosity, and forgive me if it's been stated, but does anyone know how much money forestry companies must give to wildlife protection for logging rights?

I could see that being a viable option to help top off the "Wildlife Conservation Pot". There would have to be a set percentage of money based on many factors that I can't begin to complete, roads, forested area, pollution, time, etc.

But again, this would have to go directly into a gurateed cache of money only for this one purpose. Not for government to decide later that they could use 850 million of it to build a bridge, or something.

[finaddict]

Out of curiosity, and forgive me if it's been stated, but does anyone know how much money forestry companies must give to wildlife protection for logging rights?

I could see that being a viable option to help top off the "Wildlife Conservation Pot". There would have to be a set percentage of money based on many factors that I can't begin to complete, roads, forested area, pollution, time, etc.

But again, this would have to go directly into a gurateed cache of money only for this one purpose. Not for government to decide later that they could use 850 million of it to build a bridge, or something.

It has been decades since I looked at this but in the 80's, all the logging companies paid was stumpage fee. This was essentially a "tax" based on the area in hectares being logged and the estimated cubic metres of of salable timber on the land as revealed through the silvicultural surveys. That stumpage fee was paid after the completion of the logging and I am not sure if it went to Ministry of Forests for site regeneration and seedling production, or if it went into general revenue.

I have no idea how it is managed today.

[OoDark]

the Big reason this works better in the us is because they "Nationally love guns", where here in Canada its all most criminal to like to use and hunt with them.

[cpwrestler]

[/B]Exactly this.

Forgive my repetition, but you do this and we're no better off than where we are today. In fact we may become worse off for several reasons.

1) There are more anti's in the general outdoors community than there are hunters therefore we will be a minority voice on how the funds are used.

2) With so many interest groups in play, it will become far easier for the money to be misspent on things that don't really help wildlife the way we hope. E.G. mountain bike trails, campsites, hiking trail maintenance, docks, birding stations etc.

3) Many competing voices will make it difficult to establish a clear mandate for the fund. Without a clear mandate, it is not possible to define an "appropriate" use of the funds. Without such a mandate and definition it becomes much easier for the fund to dissolve into the kind of political slush fund demonstrated in point 2... Exactly the thing everyone is most worried about.

4) The general outdoors community tends to favour "preservation" over "management." They see the outdoors as something that would just be fine if we left it alone. A fund with revenues from groups like this would likely end up producing far more protected areas like national parks than it would improving habitat and hunter opportunity.

I'm sure I could come up with some more reasons why sharing such a pot with other competing groups is bad, but the whole point of a tax like this is to ensure hunters provide a greater direct contribution to wildlife than other groups. If we do this, then we can ensure that there are more dollars to spend on wildlife and that the dollars that are spent are spent in a way that benefits wildlife AND us as hunters. Money talks in politics and with such a fund we would talk a lot louder than the antis who would have no $$ to back up their claims.

[brownmancheng]

Forgive my repetition, but you do this and we're no better off than where we are today. In fact we may become worse off for several reasons.

1) There are more anti's in the general outdoors community than there are hunters therefore we will be a minority voice on how the funds are used.

2) With so many interest groups in play, it will become far easier for the money to be misspent on things that don't really help wildlife the way we hope. E.G. mountain bike trails, campsites, hiking trail maintenance, docks, birding stations etc.

3) Many competing voices will make it difficult to establish a clear mandate for the fund. Without a clear mandate, it is not possible to define an "appropriate" use of the funds. Without such a mandate and definition it becomes much easier for the fund to dissolve into the kind of political slush fund demonstrated in point 2... Exactly the thing everyone is most worried about.

4) The general outdoors community tends to favour "preservation" over "management." They see the outdoors as something that would just be fine if we left it alone. A fund with revenues from groups like this would likely end up producing far more protected areas like national parks than it would improving habitat and hunter opportunity.

I'm sure I could come up with some more reasons why sharing such a pot with other competing groups is bad, but the whole point of a tax like this is to ensure hunters provide a greater direct contribution to wildlife than other groups. If we do this, then we can ensure that there are more dollars to spend on wildlife and that the dollars that are spent are spent in a way that benefits wildlife AND us as hunters. Money talks in politics and with such a fund we would talk a lot louder than the antis who would have no $$ to back up their claims.

hasn't this thread proven that close to half the hunters are NOT willing to pay more? how do we jump from a tax on many users to hunters fully picking up the tab? with only our 14 mil in licenses should put us in good shape!

[Rob Chipman]

Bownut:

Good recommendation on WSS and Beyond the Kill podcast. I believe in modelling success, and anytime I hear Chris talk I'm motivated to call him and say "Hey, how exactly do you pull off such good results?".

[cpwrestler]

hasn't this thread proven that close to half the hunters are NOT willing to pay more? how do we jump from a tax on many users to hunters fully picking up the tab? with only our 14 mil in licenses should put us in good shape!

No... Half the people support it, and probably 25'ish percent of the remainder say they would support it if they could trust the government to spend it wisely (which most don't). So the question becomes if 75'ish percent of the people would support such a tax if we could be sure it was truly spent on wildlife and habitat enhancement, how could we set up the fund in such a way that it would be protected from political interference?

I made some suggestions on this in post #146 (i.e. collect the funds federally, but have the provinces spend the money so that each level has to hold one another to account that the projects fit the mandate like in the States). If we put our collective minds together I'm sure we could come up with more ideas.

Remember. We're only speaking hypothetically at this point. What's the harm in throwing out ideas on how something like this MIGHT or COULD work? It's better than just saying "nope, impossible" we do enough already... If we did enough, or gave enough, we wouldn't be losing political battles, influence, opportunities, and habitat. We need to do something differently if we want our voices heard and our desires met.

As has been pointed out many times, 14 million in the scheme of things is nowhere near enough to solve the problems we complain about. It's only $14.82/sq km and would represents only 41% of our current budget. Compare that to Oregon's budget of 220 million for a land mass roughly a quarter of the size.

[HappyJack]

hasn't this thread proven that close to half the hunters are NOT willing to pay more? how do we jump from a tax on many users to hunters fully picking up the tab? with only our 14 mil in licenses should put us in good shape!

Well there are several million people in BC, I wonder how many of them would be willing to pay more taxes for the betterment of wildlife?

[northof49]

I made some suggestions on this in post #146 (i.e. collect the funds federally, but have the provinces spend the money so that each level has to hold one another to account that the projects fit the mandate like in the States).

REALLY.....you think it’s a good idea to add another level of bureaucracy with the Federal Govt.....might want to rethink that. Too many reasons to list.