Money & power

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

George Frampton Jr., Assistant Secretary of the
Interior for National Parks and Wildlife Refuges since 1993,
is to step down on February 14. Frampton, formerly president
of The Wilderness Society, has had an adversarial relationship
with Senator Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska), chair of the
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, since
his days as a trial lawyer trying to stop old growth logging in
the Tongass National Forest. Murkowski held a major interest
in the Ketchikan Pulp Company, now closed, whose logs
came primarily from the Tongass National Forest.
Data from 1,012 foundations published in the current
edition of the Foundation Center’s annual Foundation
Grants Index shows that of the top 14 types of grant recipient,
animal protection and wildlife conservation ranked 13th in
both percentage of grants allocated, at 0.9%, and dollars
received, at $46 million, 0.7% of the funding disbursed. The
pattern closely parallels patterns of individual donations.

Studies indicate that while animal protection and wildlife conservation
attract more individual gifts than any other cause,
the average donation is also the smallest.
Former Wisconsin fishing guide Mike Dombeck,
48, acting head of the Bureau of Land Management since
1994, moved over to head the Forest Service on January 6.
He succeeded Jack Ward Thomas, who retired.
Representatives Tom Delay (R-Texas) and D o n
Young (R-Alaska) and Senators Larry Craig (R-Idaho) and
Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) have received the most gifts
from 177 political action committees associated with opposition
to the Endangered Species Act, according to the U.S.
Public Interest Research Group and the Environmental
Working Group. In all, the 177 anti-ESA PACS have distributed
$74 million since 1989, U.S. PIRG and EWG report.
Final totals from the successful Massachusetts
referendum campaign to ban leghold traps, ban bear baiting,
and remove the requirement that the state Fisheries and
Wildlife Board be dominated by hunters, trappers, and fishers
show that the winners, Protect Pets and Wildlife, invested
$497,782 in cash plus $334,111 worth of in-kind contributions.
The losing Citizens Conservation Coalition spent
$343,090, plus $27,637 worth of in-kind contributions.