Last year a significant scandal hit the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It turned out that the FWS was taking monies it was collecting in part from sportsmen and turning around and funneling that money to groups that are opposed to hunting and fishing. Hunters and fisherman were outraged and that outrage extended to Congress where The Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Programs Improvement Act, currently under consideration in the Senate, includes a provision prohibiting the FWS from giving grants to groups that oppose “the regulated hunting or trapping of wildlife.”
This has the animal rights activists in a fit — how dare the government consider taking away its subsidy of their activities! According to Christine Wolf, director of government and international affairs for The Fund for Animals, “It’s not just the right to oppose sport hunting and fur trapping that’s at stake here. It’s the right of all Americans to speak out on any political issue without having the enormous coercive power of the federal government turned on them.”
What arrogance. The main victims of government’s coercive power are the fisherman and hunters who have had to sit by while the FWS funneled funds to groups ideologically committed to a complete ban on hunting and fishing.
A much better approach, however, would be a government-wide ban on grants to advocacy groups of any stripe, but the provisions in this bill are a good start.
Source:
Stealth attack on First Amendment poised to slip through Congress. Press release, The Fund for Animals, July 17, 2000.