!88 PROBLEMS IN WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 



To date twenty-five states 29 have adopted this system of 

 financing. 



However plausible this reasoning may seem, in fact the 

 separate fund system is fundamentally unsound. In the 

 first place, conservation is not a matter wholly the concern 

 of sportsmen. The citizens at large in the state own the 

 wild game found within its borders and certainly the in- 

 terests of the whole should be paramount to those of any 

 one class. The charge collected, that is the license fee, by 

 its very name implies that it is paid to allow the individual 

 to do something which ordinarily he would not be allowed 

 to do. 



Under a separate fund system the conservation depart- 

 ment may be existing in comparative luxury while other 

 departments in the state are struggling along on starvation 

 budgets. The expenditures of the state departments should 

 be upon the basis of needs, not income. If the needs of the 

 conservation department are as great as those of other 

 spending services, it has nothing to fear; if they are not, 

 then the separate fund plan gives it an undue advantage 

 which should be abolished. All incoming and outgoing 

 revenue should pass through a single general fund, appor- 

 tioned each year among the various spending agencies by 

 the general budget agency. 



The separate fund system tends to result in the depart- 

 ment either piling up a surplus when it continuously spends 

 less than its income, or it tends to promote wasteful and 

 unnecessary spending in those states where there is a pro- 

 vision that unexpended amounts remaining in the fund at 

 the end of the year be returned to the general fund. In- 



29 Wyoming, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Utah, Oklahoma, 

 North Dakota, New Mexico, Nevada, New Hampshire, Mississippi, 

 Michigan, Louisiana, Kentucky, Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Colorado, 

 Arkansas, Arizona, Texas, Oregon, Minnesota, Maryland and Maine. 



