Wildlife took a few hits - as expected - this year in the Legislative process.
Lost was $1.6 million received each of the past three years to offset cuts in the number of deer hunters allowed to hunt. This cut was expected and planned for, said John Kimball, interim director of the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. "This we can live with," he said.Left in place was $800,000, initiated last year, for fish hatchery restoration.
Cut, however, was $150,000 from the habitat restoration budget and another $34,000 from non-game programs. "These cuts we didn't expect and they will hurt us. Just how I don't know yet. We don't want to stop the programs, but we didn't get funding," Kimball said during a briefing with media on Tuesday.
Last year's payment to the DWR from the general fund was around $4.7 million. This year it will be around $3.5 million.
"We have some reserves we can draw on and we're hoping to see more revenue from license sales. We maintained our cap of 97,000 hunters this year knowing we were going to lose the $1.6 million. We'll have to see what happens and then decide if we keep the cap next year or go to some other program," said Kimball.
"Sportsmen, though, are going to need to get more involved in the RAC (Regional Advisory Council) meetings. Sportsmen have told us what they expect from us with respect to deer and elk management, now they need to realize what effects it will have on them."
The $800,000 from the general fund, along with another $200,000 from the DWR and matched by three-to-one funding from the Central Utah Project, will make available $4 million this year to start work on the Kamas fish hatchery, one of the most important in the hatchery system.
Joe Valentine, aquatic culture supervisor for the DWR, said bids are being taken and work should start this summer. He added the the cost to restore each hatchery, if done right, will be around $5.5 million. When completed, the production of each hatchery will be doubled. Last year, 40,000 people visited the Kamas hatchery.
With respect to specific legislation:
- House Bill 115 is expected to pass and deals with Posted Hunting Units, which will now be called Cooperative Wildlife Management Units. The purpose of this bill is to better spell out boundaries and use of public lands within the PHU areas. It states that public lands can be included in the PHU area if: one, the public land is land-locked byprivate land; two, it makes it easier for hunters to identify boundaries; and three, it is important in reaching management objective. Under the PHU program, private land owners are given a number of hunting permits in exchange for opening up lands to a specified number of hunters.
- The bill allowing elk farming in Utah (House Bill 90) passed onto the Senate subcommittee by a vote of 49-21, despite strong opposition from the RACs and the DWR.
- The guides and outfitters bill (House Bill 37) failed because of the addition of watered-down language that took the teeth out of the bill.
- A bill that would have taken control of the wild fisheries program away from the Department of Agriculture and return it to the DWR fail to materialize this year.
- A bill that would give the DWR $150,000 to pay for bear and cougar depredation passed out of committee.
- Other legislation involves allowing quadriplegic sportsmen to hunt for deer and elk; changing the state fish from a rainbow to a cutthroat; and modifying the value of and restitution for poached cougars.
Kimball also noted that preliminary reports show deer hunting success last year approached near-recovery levels. Success in the Southern Region was around 43.8 percent and in other regions at was around 30 percent.
"I think it shows we now have good deer hunting available. Now we're just concerned over the number of hunters," he added.
According to Wes Shields, wildlife program coordinator, most of Utah's deer herds appear to be on target for management projections of 15 bucks per 100 does.
"Of the 50 units," he said, "only 17 are not showing the recovery we would like."
Options in those units would be to future restrict the number of hunters or to make it more difficult to harvest a deer.