DIF&W ads trained on southern Maine

AUGUSTA – A promotional campaign by the state’s fish and game department targets southern Maine, the region where support for last month’s failed bear-baiting referendum was strongest.

Voters statewide rejected the proposal to ban hunting bears with bait, traps and dogs by 53 percent to 47 percent, but the measure passed in York and Cumberland counties.

Mark Michaud, information director for the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, said pre-election polls showed that voters in southern Maine opposed the hunting methods, which the department supports. As a result, the department in July began shifting its advertising south and plans to continue with future TV commercials.

“The fact that area did not have a good grasp on management issues, we felt that would be a pretty good place [to focus on],” Michaud said. “We felt there was no sense preaching to the choir.”

Some supporters of the bear-baiting referendum question the department’s view that opponents lacked understanding of its mission.

John Glowa of South China, a board member of the newly formed Wildlife Alliance of Maine, says the department’s commercials amount to propaganda that fails to address such issues as endangered species or nongame wildlife.

Like other state agencies, Inland Fisheries and Wildlife allocates funds for television promotional campaigns, which tend to be used for “public awareness or public service-type issues,” said Ryan Low, state budget officer.

Mark Latti, spokesman for Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, said the department recently had to cut its budget for marketing in the past year from $100,000 to $50,000 for television advertisements. Now, he said, virtually all of that money is being directed at promotional efforts in southern Maine.

In the past four years, department commercials featured game mammals and fisheries issues. In the next two weeks, Latti says, they will focus on snowmobile safety and endangered species.

Michaud says he is trying to inform Mainers in southern counties about the department’s work in other ways, such as by getting more hunter education and firearm safety courses taught in schools to help educate young people on wildlife issues.

Such courses already are taught in schools statewide, he says, but are far more prevalent in northern and eastern Maine.

“If [students] don’t care about hunting, that’s understandable,” Michaud said. “But at the same time, I think handling firearms safely is important not just for hunting. … The more rural areas, I think, are pretty much asking for these on a regular basis. The more populated areas, that might not be the case.”