Our View: How to get wildlife watchers to pay? | Editorials | Idaho Statesman

The Idaho Department of Fish and Game has a wide-ranging mission and a finite source of funding.

The agency bears the responsibility for managing all of the state’s wildlife, not just the sport species avidly pursued by hunters and anglers.

In the short run, Fish and Game is bracing for reduced federal funding — and the agency faces a more pervasive long-range challenge. Hunter and angler numbers are dropping nationally. Licenses and tags provide the bread-and-butter funding source for an agency that doesn’t receive a dime of general fund tax money. As license and tag sales go, so goes Fish and Game’s funding.

Here are the national trends looming on the horizon:

Æ From 1996 to 2006, angler numbers dropped from 35 million to 30 million. [...]

Full article at idahostatesman.com

 

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