Exactly what cannabis taxes should be allocated to – education and nature preservation, well done Montana
Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte announced on Friday that he had recently signed House Bill 932, a proposal that would expand uses for the conservation-dedicated tax revenues the state collects on recreational marijuana sales.
Under HB 932, the scope of wildlife habitat protection and improvement supported with marijuana taxes will broaden to include projects implemented on private land. The law is slated to take effect July 1.
Before the latest legislative reform, Habitat Montana was the sole beneficiary of the roughly $10 million of habitat-conservation-dedicated funding that marijuana revenues support. In recent years, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks has used Habitat Montana to purchase new Wildlife Management Areas and secure both perpetual conservation easements and 40-year conservation leases.
With HB 932 in play this summer, that $10 million of conservation funding will all go into a new account: the “habitat legacy account.” From there, it will be further divided into three separate funding buckets. Most of the money, 75%, will support Habitat Montana and state water projects. Roughly 20% of the remainder will be funneled into an existing program called the Wildlife Habitat Improvement Program, or WHIP, and 5% will be directed toward the newly established wildlife crossings account that seeks to reduce the wildlife-vehicle collisions that plague the state’s highways and interstates.
