It’s been a year of records at the Idaho Department of Fish & Game, Director Virgil Moore told legislative budget writers this morning, “some good and some challenging.” Last fall, he said, Idaho hunters enjoyed an excellent hunting season, making the last two seasons the best in more than a quarter-century.  Now, he said, “We find ourselves in the midst of one of the toughest winters in decades.” The department expects to spend more than $1 million, a record, dealing with depredation prevention, crop predations, and winter feeding for wildlife. “We have operations going on around the clock in southern Idaho, and the situation is changing almost daily,” he said.

Already this session, lawmakers have approved and the governor has signed a supplemental appropriation for $400,000 for emergency winter feeding. “It’s already being utilized on the ground,” Moore said.

Last fall, he said, non-resident deer tags sold out for the first time since 2008, and non-resident elk tags nearly sold out.

“As you know, resident fees have not been adjusted in over a decade since 2005,” Moore told the lawmakers. “Not much costs the same today as it did in 2005.” Fish feed, in particular, has seen rising costs but no rising funding source, he said. While license revenues for 2016 were at a high of $38.7 million, he said, “We know it can change in a hurry. It’s affected by wildfires, deer and elk populations, reservoir levels, stream flows, the national economy and other factors that are outside our control.” He said, “This year’s winter is facing up to be one of those factors that is beyond our control that we simply have to respond to.”

So Fish & Game has been focusing on priorities, including raising and releasing fish, and monitoring wildlife populations. Increased collaring of deer and elk is “paying off” he said, and is a “tremendous tool for dealing with those populations in real time. … But it’s expensive.”

Crimped for funding, he said, “We have had to reduce other services.” He noted, “We provide the most extensive infrastructure in the state for facilitating hunting and fishing,” including boating access sites that are funded by sportsmen license dollars but also used by non-license holders. The department also is relying increasingly on volunteers, he said, particularly for hunter education instruction.

Last year, Moore said, Idaho Fish & Game sold just over 1.6 million licenses, tags and permits to 536,000 hunters, anglers and trappers. It is currently evaluating a new contract for online sales that will include “additional customer security and benefits,” he said.

The department’s budget request for next year, at $102.8 million with no state general funds, reflects a decrease from this year’s level of 3.1 percent; this year’s budget included a number of significant one-time expenditures, so their removal accounted for the difference.

 Initiatives planned for next year include construction of a new regional office building in the Southwest region between Meridian and Nampa, at $650,000; $899,000 in federal funds for fish screening to keep juvenile salmon and steelhead out of irrigation ditches and canals, along with maintaining more than 300 boating and fishing access points statewide; $500,000 for hatchery maintenance and repair; $800,000 in grant funds from the state Office of Species Conservation to complete a Snake River sockeye salmon trap facility at the outlet of Redfish Lake near Stanley; and $175,000 for shooting range improvements at various locations around the state.