The Idaho Fish & Game Commission today directed Fish & Game staff to develop a new fee-increase bill for consideration by the Legislature that includes a new $5 surcharge to go toward depredation damages and prevention, along with improving hunting and fishing access. The surcharge would be paid prior to purchasing an annual fishing or hunting license, and would not change the department’s “Price Lock” fee-increase bill, which the department still hopes to press. Idaho’s resident fishing and hunting license and tag fees haven’t been raised since 2004.

The new $5 surcharge would raise an estimated $2 million a year. Of that, $500,000 would go to increase the amount, now at $1 million, that the department pays landowners to compensate for depredation damage caused by wildlife. Another $500,000 would go to efforts to prevent crop damage from big game herds. And $1 million would be for improving access to private land where willing landowners will allow hunting and fishing.

“Fish and Game’s depredation compensation law has been in effect for nearly 30 years,” the commission said in a news release. “The new fee not only improves Fish and Game’s ability to compensate for and prevent damages, it also helps the agency provide more and better hunting and fishing opportunity across the state.”

The commission added that it “recognizes that managing for abundant big game herds comes with responsibility to address impacts those herds cause to privately owned farms and ranches.”

 There’s more info online here about the proposed surcharge, and more here on the Price Lock proposal. It’s designed to allow those who purchase a license every year to lock in current prices and avoid the increase.

Last month, House Resources Chair Marc Gibbs, R-Grace, refused to allow the price lock bill to be introduced until more efforts were taken to deal with depredation.

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