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Wildlife
and their habitats play in integral role in the Mississippian's
daily lives. Mississippi's biological diversity provides the state
and its citizens with numerous economic, ecological, recreational
and aesthetic benefits including hunting, fishing and wildlife
watching and tourism. Federal funding to Mississippi through the
Pittman-Robertson and Wallop-Breaux Acts have helped ensure conservation
of many wildlife species hunted and fished by sportsmen and women.
But, there has been a serious gap in state and federal funding
for many species of fish and wildlife not addressed by hunting
and fishing license fees and excise taxes. So, despite years of
conservation work, much remains to be done.
In Mississippi 86 animal species are
listed as threatened and endangered and another 250+ species
are considered rare enough to warrant concern by the conservation
community.
In 2000, the US Congress began to address
the enormous challenge of conserving "all" wildlife by creating
the State Wildlife Grants (SWG) Program. SWG was developed to
assist states in conserving rare and declining species and to
promote proactive conservation to avert future declines of more
common species. MDWFP is using this program to conserve wildlife
through many efforts around the state. This funding is intended
to supplement, not replace or duplicate, existing fish and wildlife
programs.
As
a condition to receiving this new federal funding,
Congress required each state to develop a comprehensive
wildlife conservation strategy (CWCS). In 2003,
MDWFP launched its CWCS effort to meet this
federal requirement and our state CWCS has been
approved!. More importantly, the CWCS effort
is providing a seat at the table for all interests
to join forces to build an effective plan to
conserve wildlife in Mississippi.
Mississippi's CWCS is a blueprint aimed at conserving wild
species and their habitat. The purpose of this planning effort
is to provide a guide to effective and efficient long-term conservation
of Mississippi's biological diversity, our natural heritage.
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