Fish And Game Hunts For Funds Department May Be Forced To Cut Programs, Raise Fees

After making deep spending cuts to cope with a flood of red ink, Fish and Game Department officials told legislative budget writers Friday the agency is headed back into the black, but cannot stay there long without major changes.

“For the next few years, we can be in the black, but then the thing drops,” Steve Mealey, the new Fish and Game director, told the Joint Finance-Appropriation Committee.

“When you begin to look at declining budgets, the sack of money that might be shrinking, that has some strong implications for what we can do,” Mealey said.

Fishing and hunting license revenues are expected to be 11 percent lower in the 1998 budget year than they are this year, while no notable increase is projected in federal revenues, officials said. The two provide nearly 90 percent of the department’s cash support.

“We intend to run a barebones operation in the next few years,” Mealey said.

He promised to re-examine the department’s priorities and present lawmakers and the public with options to stay in the black. He made no recommendations, but left little doubt the choices were reduced programs or higher license and tag fees.

“We have to look at what we want to do and how we can afford to do it,” he said. “There are no simple solutions.”

Much of the Fish and Game Department’s financial problems resulted from comparatively high nonresident hunting license and tag fees that discouraged out-of-state hunters. When the charges were increased several years ago, officials expected surrounding states to follow suit, but they did not.

“We’re in competition for the declining pool of non-resident hunters and our licenses are high,” he said.

That problem has been compounded by a general decline in the number of sportsmen statewide, he said.

Twenty-seven percent of Idahoans had hunting licenses in 1980. Only 20 percent have them today. And the trend is the same for fishing licenses - 48 percent in 1980 and 36 percent now.

Some of it reflects a cultural shift in Idaho that includes urbanization and an increasing number of single-parent families, he maintained. But there has also been impact from the anti-hunting movement that many blamed for last year’s failed attempt to restrict bear-hunting.

“There’s a constituency there that thinks we shouldn’t kill any animals,” Mealey said. “They don’t have connections to the land. We all know that. There’s no question. Their rhetoric has had an effect.”