While wildlife advocates have called on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to relist the wolf, the agency has said it would review the status of the species but won’t step in now.
On Monday, the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, the Center for Biological Diversity and a coalition of 25 Native American, conservation and animal welfare organizations proposed a different remedy. They asked Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to adopt regulations that withhold Pittman-Robertson dollars from states that allow hunting and trapping “at levels that compromise healthy populations of wildlife, including predators.”
The Pittman-Robertson Act taxes the sale of guns and ammunition and distributes the revenue to state wildlife agencies. This year, approximately $1 billion was funneled to state wildlife agencies. The law already requires states to maintain healthy wildlife populations to receive the money but the requirement isn’t enforced.
