Simple way to fund Fisheries and Wildlife

After reading the guest column by George Smith, executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine (“Sunday hunting makes sense,” BDN, Jan. 14), my reaction was one of amazement. This is the man who has worked diligently for 10 years to make sure the nonhunting public does not contribute money to Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. Why? The reason is simple, but first, a short legislative primer.

All bills pertaining to wildlife must first pass muster with a committee composed of senators and representatives. This group is known as the Joint Standing Committee on Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. If it is this body’s opinion that a bill is not fit to be voted on by the full Legislature, they simply kill it. If even one committee member votes for that bill to be presented to the full Legislature, it is, but the majority vote against it earns the bill an “ought not to pass” designation. Since the full Legislature cannot possibly be educated on every bill that is offered to it, they usually vote as recommended by the committee.

The system is a good one, providing representation for the majority of citizens within the various committees which make up our Legislature. This is where we have a system breakdown in the governance of our wildlife policies.

Our Joint Standing Committee on Inland Fisheries and Wildlife is made up entirely of the hunting community. In checking SAM’s finances we found the majority of the committee members either accepted money from, become a member of and-or actively supported this organization. This is the equivalent of having our Natural Resources Committee made up entirely of representatives and senators who have worked for chemical companies. Whether or not all committee members have the ability to vote in an unbiased manner, and we believe there are some who can, there is certainly a perception of one-sidedness or cronyism. This is not something we should stand idly by and accept.

The hunting public in Maine makes up approximately 11 percent of Maine’s population in any given year. Why then, do the 89 percent of Maine citizens who do not hunt have no voice in their wildlife governance? I believe the wildlife of Maine belongs to all its citizens.

Back to SAM. The constituency that Smith represents may believe that should Maine’s nonhunters ever achieve the representation they are entitled to it will be the end of hunting in Maine. In reality, it will bring sanity back to the woods of Maine. When this equal representation is attained, and it will be, the funding for IF&W can come from all the citizens of Maine.

The Wildlife Alliance of Maine supports a $5 fee for all small, non-motorized craft. This includes sailboats, kayaks and canoes. We will work diligently to ensure that the people who paddle and sail these craft understand that their contribution is helping to make the Maine woods a place we can be proud to call our own. Not a place where people indiscriminately kill coyotes for their pleasure. Neither where they trap bears, snare whatever happens to be so unlucky as to walk into one or hunt seven days a week with little care for peace and quiet for the majority of Maine’s citizens on Sundays.

When we know that the committee has a balance, both hunters and nonhunters can be proud of the traditions that will continue in Maine. For now, the current funding structure the state uses treats the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife as an island. That island is slowly sinking.

For now, we need to understand and speak out against what goes on in our wildlife governance. The status quo will continue to try to find ways to introduce “stealth” bills like Sunday hunting or indigenous species bills and make deals to help prop up an agency that is finding that the old ways of financing itself are quickly falling by the wayside. We will continue to see the extremist end of the hunting community practicing their roundabout obstructionism for the nonhunting majority of Mainers in our legislative body. This only causes the wildlife managers of Maine to work harder to ensure that more bears are fed so that there are more bears to kill, more coyotes are killed to artificially enhance deer populations so that those deer might be killed and just in general work hard to artificially maintain wildlife populations in the Maine woods to ensure that those who fund them will keep doing so.

There is an extremely simple solution that requires no imagination, just the intestinal fortitude to carry it out. Very simply, all monies and fees collected by the state for all outdoor activities would go into the General Fund. Take away the concept that this department is an island. We would then fund our wildlife agency completely from the General Fund. I’m sure our governor could find some imaginative ways to extract the extra monies needed for IF&W with the help of all those who would achieve representation within the governing body. Since IF&W gets bailed out regularly by the General Fund anyway, this would remove any appearance of impropriety within the governing body when this equitable representation of which I speak is attained. If this were to happen the loudest complaints would come from the leaders of the hunting community. They are not prepared to lose the complete monopoly they have in Augusta. Our Constitution guarantees equal representation. Let it be so.

Let all of us who enjoy the outdoors help pay for our wildlife agency. Most people who spend any time at all in the Maine woods would be happy to pitch in if only they felt like they had a voice in what goes on. They currently do not.

What needs to happen now is that the Speaker of the House and the Senate Leader need to appoint a committee based on balanced representation, not on the interests of the hunting community. We need members of the committee who do not have any hunting or trapping interests.

We also need to understand that folks like Smith are adept at getting us to watch one hand while picking our pocket with the other. Let’s read between the lines when they talk about not having any other way of funding IF&W beside Sunday hunting. When imagination replaces the status quo we will find the answers and then some.

Daryl DeJoy is the director of the Wildlife Alliance of Maine. He is the head of the legal committee for the NoSnare Task Force and owner of Penobscot Solar Design. For more information visit www.wildlifealliancemaine.org