Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration - Texas Parks and Wildlife [Official]

[Narration] What's 75 years old and worth 12 billion dollars
in fish and wildlife conservation? It's the Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program
which draws an excise tax from the manufacture of firearms, ammunition, archery equipment,
sport fishing tackle and motorboat fuels. The US Fish and Wildlife Service then distributes
these funds to state agencies to benefit natural resource conservation.
[Clayton Wolf] Wildlife Sport Fish Restoration Funds that
come to Texas and all the other states are significant. They're a significant part of
the Wildlife Division Budget they pay for many wildlife conservation activities out
there, monitoring of wildlife populations, and also our biologists working with private
landowners to give them the technical guidance they need when they're seeking advice and
managing their habitat for the benefit of wildlife for all Texans.
[Narration] Aquatic species have also benefitted and fishing
in Texas is the best in the nation, thanks to these funds.
[David Terre] Really the Sport Fish Restoration funds provide
about 18 million dollars to the state of Texas each year. This is huge for our state. Most
of those monies are spent on managing freshwater and saltwater fisheries resources, doing research.
[Biologist] 204
[David Terre] Doing habitat protection and also for stocking
fish. .
[David Terre] These funds have been used to create literally
hundreds of boat ramps, fishing piers that people can use to access our public water
bodies throughout the state of Texas.
[Narration] Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration funds
allowed the acquisition of 51 Wildlife management areas and efforts to restore native habitat
and populations of white-tailed deer, wild turkey, pronghorn and bighorn sheep. It also
funds outreach and angler education, hunter education and training, leasing of some public
hunting lands, and the construction of public shooting facilities. For Texas Parks and Wildlife,
this is Lee Smith.