RESTORING WILD LIFE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 98, 24 February 1947, Page 6

RESTORING WILD LIFE

AMERICA PREPARES TO SPEND A gradual but certain increase in expenditure for wild life restoration—curtailed during the war—is planned by the Interior Department, states an American newspaper. Fish and Wildlife Service officials said they had hoped to resume the work on a peacetime scale last year but budgetary restrictions changed the programme.

Assurance that an increase was on the books coincided with protests from various states against a limitation of 2,500,000 dollars for the Government year ending next June and reports of a like limitation for this fiscal year. The money is derived from excise taxes on sporting goods and the Federal Government is supposed to allot proportionate sums to each State. While wartime curtailments have not been fully removed, the officials said the fund is being kept intact for future use.

Department officials added that Secretary Krug was anxious to resume full-scale operations but thought he should accede to budgetary trends in the immediate future. A shai'p protest against restrictions on use of the ear-marked fund came from H. A. Rider, Conservative Commissioner of Ohio. He wrote a letter directly to President Truman sugesting that the current Federal allotment should be at least 5,000,000 dollars instead of 2,500,000 dollars. Officials estimated that the smaller sum provided about 87,000 dollars for Ohio. “I am at a total loss to understand such improper appropriations,” said Mr Rider’s letter, which was sent also to Secretary Krug and all Ohio members of Congress. By requesting only a part of available tax collections, Mr Rider said, the Department had built up the fund to a point where there, was a surplus of 15,000,000 dollars.