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Indepth Arts News:
"The Duck Stamp Competition"
2000-11-13 until 2000-11-26
San Bernardino County Museum, Fisk Gallery
Redlands, CA,
USA United States of America
The top 100 paintings of the yearly
Federal Duck Stamp competition
continue to be a major feature of the
Wildlife Art Festival. In the early
history of the United States, wide
expanses of frontier and abundant
wildlife and waterfowl were taken
for granted. But as population
increased, marshes and wetlands
were drained for agricultural use,
and city populations made increasing
demands for fresh food. With
wetlands loss and market hunting,
formerly vast waterfowl populations
faced extinction.
Public awareness that waterfowl
populations were threatened led
Congress to enact the Migratory Bird
Conservation Act in 1929. This law
was largely symbolic, since it
contained no funding provisions. It
was the passage of the Robinson
Pittman Act of 1934—the Duck
Stamp law—that provided funding
for the protection of wetlands and
waterfowl. The enactment of the
1934 legislation, supported by
conservationists, hunters, and
sportsmen nationwide and spurred
on by the political cartoons of Jay N.
Darling, required the purchase by
every waterfowl hunter of an annual
federal migratory waterfowl
conservation stamp.
Until 1949, an artist was
commissioned to design the yearly
stamp. Since that time, a contest
system has been used to select the
design. Today, more than a thousand
entries are received each year, and
the stamps are purchased not only
by hunters but by collectors, art
patrons, and non-hunting
conservationists. The proceeds from
stamp sales are the single largest
source of funding for wetlands
habitat conservation and
enhancement.
IMAGE:
First place, 1999 competition:
Mottled Duck,
by Adam Grimm
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