Help increase funding to National Wildlife Refuge System
Bottom line upfront: We need your help!
If you are reading this, it is a safe bet that you hold the J.N. “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge in high regard. Now, ask yourself: What do I really like about “Ding”? Is it Wildlife Drive? Is it the Visitor & Education Center? Is it the lectures and films? Maybe the educational programs or special tours?
Now, how you would feel if one or all those things about “Ding” were no longer available? “What?! The Visitor & Education Center is closed? What happened to the lecture series? I thought Wildlife Drive was only closed on Fridays! Now it’s closed on Tuesdays, too? What’s going on?!”
What’s going on, to be blunt, is funding … or lack thereof. In fact, one of these things has already happened, to an extent. The Visitor & Education Center has had to close on Sundays because of a budget shortfall. If the funding situation doesn’t improve, Wildlife Drive, currently closed only on Fridays, could be closed an additional day or more each week. And more cutbacks in other popular programs are a very real possibility. That’s why we’re writing this column.
Without getting into the nuts and bolts of how funding for the National Wildlife Refuge System works, suffice it to say that “Ding” Darling receives an ever-shrinking piece of an ever- shrinking federal funding pie. Over the last decade government funding of the refuge system overall has stayed basically static while inflation has continued to rise. It would have taken roughly a 20 percent increase in funding just to keep up with inflation.
Meanwhile, at “Ding” over the last 15 years, annual visitors to the refuge have increased by 66 percent to nearly 1 million a year (that’s good news). However, over the same time, federal funding for the refuge has decreased by 60 percent, and that has caused “Ding’s” staffing to be cut by 50 percent.
The “Ding” Darling Wildlife Society-Friends of the Refuge has been able to fill some of the funding gaps over the years and keep some programs going, but these efforts don’t address the larger issue. The refuge system overall needs a larger share of the federal budget. That’s where you, the people who love “Ding,” come in. We urge you to contact your elected representatives in Washington and ask that they support increased funding for the refuge system. Call or write. Better yet, call and write. Do it regularly. As the saying goes, “The squeaky wheel gets the most grease!”
As a government-recognized nonprofit entity, the DDWS is prohibited from directly soliciting or advocating in favor of any political candidate, but we can advocate for funding. And you can too.
For more information, visit https://dingdarlingsociety.org/articles/advocate#/12.
Bill Harkey is a member of the Advocacy Committee for the “Ding” Darling Wildlife Society-Friends of the Refuge. For more information, visit www.dingdarlingsociety.org.