Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 20, 1990 TAG: 9003202557
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B3 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: By DAVID REED ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Virginians who are due tax refunds from the state can designate part of the refund for non-game wildlife by writing the amount on a line in their tax forms. Non-game wildlife includes plants and any animal or bird not hunted or fished.
Contributions to non-game wildlife from tax refunds, the predominant source of funding, totaled $649,982 in 1987, $502,802 in 1988 and $421,921 in 1989, according to the state Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.
Because of the declining amount in the fund for non-game wildlife, investigations of some endangered species - including the manatee and the loggerhead shrike - have had to be dropped, said Pete Bromley, a Virginia Cooperative Extension Service wildlife specialist.
The loggerhead shrike is a shrill-voiced, gray and black songbird slightly bigger than a mockingbird. The shrike, the only predatory songbird in North America, used to be found throughout the rural areas of Virginia but now is confined to a handful of counties in the northern Shenandoah Valley, Bromley said.
"It's really an impressive animal," said Suzie Gilley, wildlife education specialist with the game department.
The loggerhead shrike lives in thornapple patches and the shrubs along fencerows that separate fields. "It impales its prey, insects, on the thorns of bushes or on the barbed wire, and saves it to eat later," she said.
Bromley said preliminary research showed that the shrike's mortality rate was continuing to climb. Further research could identify the causes of decline and determine how the environment could be manipulated to ensure the survival of the species, he said.
Although research will be reduced if donations continue to fall, Gilley said priorities will be determined among programs so that the plants and animals in dire need of help will be studied.
"We will not let any species suffer," she said. "We will find what needs to be done for them. But I don't know where the money will come. Everything already is cut down to the bone."
Sixty-two animals are listed as endangered in Virginia, including the bald eagle, peregrine falcon, red-cockaded woodpecker, Delmarva fox squirrel, Virginia big-eared bat and Dismal Swamp shrew.
A recent survey done by Virginia Tech showed that more than 95 percent of adults in the state say they enjoy watching wildlife.
"But only a minority of people are contributing to studying and preserving that wildlife," he said.
Gilley said fewer than 50,000, or 2.5 percent, of the nearly 2 million people who received state tax refunds last year designated some of their refund as a contribution to the non-game wildlife program. She said the downward trend is due in part to tax reforms that have provided more accurate estimates of the amount of taxes people owe and have thus led to fewer refunds.
In addition, people are dividing their money among other programs recently added to state tax returns, she said.
Beginning last year, state taxpayers could donate part of their refund to a housing program, political parties, the U.S. Olympic Committee and state parks.
The non-game wildlife program received the most money last year, $421,921, with housing receiving the second-highest amount, $107,107.
by CNB