How the Shooting Sports Industry Launched the Conservation Movement
By 1899 many populations of game and non-game species had been decimated by market hunting, spring shooting, plume hunting and habitat losses. Waterfowl numbers were crashing, the white-tailed deer herd had slipped to fewer than a million animals and numerous wildlife species had reached all-time population lows.
What happened next has been overlooked by all but the most diligent conservation historians.
The story begins in 1911 when W. R. “Billy” Clark, advertising manager of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, convinced his boss, Harry S. Leonard, that restoring dwindling game populations would require a substantial contribution to conservation. Leonard approached New York lawyer William B. Haskell offering $125,000 from a coalition of shooting sports companies for the establishment of an organization to preserve wildlife.
The American Game Protective and Propagation Association was incorporated on Sept. 25, 1911, and John B. Burnham named president. Former President Theodore Roosevelt wrote of the AGPPA, “The manufacturers…should be backed up by every sportsman worthy of the name, and by every lover of Nature, and every good citizen.”
Burnham and the AGPPA breathed new life into efforts to protect wildlife, and in 1918, after years of contentious debate, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act ended market hunting and spring shooting. Waterfowl populations quickly rebounded, but conservationists remained concerned about ongoing habitat losses.
In 1921 Frederic C. Walcott, one of the founders of the AGPPA, wrote a powerful article in the association’s Bulletin titled “The Necessity of Free Shooting Grounds” in which he promoted the idea of funding waterfowl habitat and public shooting grounds through the sale of a hunting stamp.
The article, illustrated by a stamp-like sketch of Canada geese by noted wildlife artist Belmore Browne, was the first recorded effort to create a duck stamp.
That same year Walcott convinced Sen. Harry New of Indiana and Rep. Dan Anthony of Kansas to introduce a hunting stamp bill into the 67th Congress. The bill enjoyed overwhelming national support and easily passed the Senate only to be killed in the House, where it ran into opposition from states’-rights advocates.
Similar bills failed in the 68th and 69th sessions of Congress after proponents found themselves under attack from one of the country’s first anti-hunters, firebrand Dr. William Hornady, who accused Burnham and the association of being tools for the shooting sports industry.
In 1929, on its fourth try, a watered-down version of the bill, the public shooting grounds and funding provisions removed, was approved by the 70th Congress. Some proponents believed the Migratory Bird Conservation Act was better than nothing, but Walcott, who had been elected to the Senate in 1928, wasn’t satisfied.
Walcott and Sen. Harry Hawes quietly introduced a resolution to create a Senate Special Committee on the Conservation of Wildlife Resources. The resolution was approved and Walcott was named chairman of a committee that would ultimately do much to shape the future of wildlife conservation.
Walcott and Rep. Richard Kleberg of Texas introduced a bill that included the sale of a duck stamp and, using his clout as chairman of the special committee, pushed the bill through Congress. On March 16, 1934, the Migratory Bird Hunting Stamp Act was signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The shooting sports industry stepped up with vital support for conservation interests again in 1935. Jay Norwood “Ding” Darling, the new director of the Bureau of Biological Survey, called a meeting of gun and ammunition companies at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. His goal: To raise $81,000 to create training programs at nine land-grant colleges across the country.
C. K. Davis, president of Remington, gave such a rousing endorsement of the program that representatives of the other companies voted unanimously to support Darling’s concept, and thus the Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit Program was born.
A few months later Darling and Walcott founded the American Wildlife Institute (AWI), which assumed the duties of the old AGPPA, and the North American Wildlife Foundation (NAWF), and in 1938 those organizations were responsible for establishment of the Delta Marsh Research Station in Manitoba.
Yet another in the long list of accomplishments set in motion by creation of the AGPPA came to pass in 1937. After Walcott retired from the Senate, his committee was taken over by Sen. Key Pittman of Nevada, and a similar committee was formed in the House of Representatives and chaired by Rep. A. Willis Robertson of Virginia.
Their Pittman-Robertson Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act, which created an excise tax on sporting firearms and ammunition, was one of the special committee’s most enduring contributions to wildlife conservation.
All these critically important initiatives—the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the federal duck stamp, the wildlife research programs, the Pittman-Robertson Act and the Delta research facility—sprang directly or indirectly from the old AGPPA, which might never have been created were it not for the arms and ammunition industries.
Their work continues in the 21st century. In 1946 the AWI became the Wildlife Management Institute (WMI), which still exists today. In 1998 the NAWF officially changed its name to Delta Waterfowl Foundation, which has been conducting cutting-edge scientific research for more than 70 years.