Ripping Off Idaho Hunters and Fishermen
By George Dovel, editor and publisher of The Outdoorsman
How much of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) budget is spent on non-game programs?
In a 1,900-word response to several issues raised in a 500-word guest opinion published on Jan. 2, 2009, IDFG Communications Bureau Chief Mike Keckler intimated that about $70,000 in sportsman license fees are spent for non-game activities and about $168,000 in sportsman excise taxes are spent for non-game program employee salaries in the Wildlife Bureau.
During a fee increase promotion for an SFW-Idaho Chapter in Heyburn on January 23, 2009, Commissioner Wayne Wright reportedly said only about $50,000 of the $46 million collected exclusively from sportsmen is used for non-game and most of that is for education such as the non-game publication “Wildlife Express.”
In a seven-page email to three concerned sportsmen, dated Jan. 17, 2009, Commissioner Tony McDermott claimed that no sportsman money was spent on non game in two of the seven Bureaus that spend money both for nongame species and for other non-game activities.
What is the truth?
For starters, there is a significant difference between the single word “nongame” (species that are not classified as game) and “non game” or “non-game” (programs that do not benefit game species or the license buyers who pursue them).
For most of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game’s existence, “all wildlife” was defined as “wild mammals, wild birds and fish hunted by man” (i.e. game species and furbearers, and a few rodents, reptiles, amphibians, crustaceans and predatory species). Some other species were put off-limits to hunting and became protected nongame.
But when fringe radicals infiltrated the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (now shortened to AFWA), it directed State Fish and Game agencies to change the definition of “wildlife” to “any form of animal life, native or exotic, generally living in a state of nature” (i.e. thousands of nongame species in addition to the relatively few species harvested by hunters, fishermen and trappers).
Most Idaho legislators thought that “animal life” meant mammals – or that it might include birds or fishes. They had no idea this meant that IDFG is now required by law to manage and protect nongame species such as black widow and brown banjo spiders, cockroaches and termites, head lice, body lice, crab lice, mosquitoes that carry West Nile virus, ticks that carry two types of spotted fever, rodents with their fleas and other parasites that host and transmit deadly plagues, and all the rest of the disease carriers that exterminators charge homeowners to destroy.
In addition to carrying other diseases, Idaho bats transmit bat rabies to other animals, and occasionally to humans, yet IDFG has spent thousands of dollars teaching school children and their parents never to harm a bat, including those that occupy their home. Recently the Commission – not the Legislature – agreed to establish a civil value to be charged to anyone who causes the destruction of any protected nongame species.
AFWA, The Nature Conservancy (TNC)/Natureserve and its Heritage Programs/Conservation Data Center (CDC) are all international entities yet the IDFG admits they are following national and international non-governmental organization (NGO) agendas instead of obeying Idaho Law and managing the species held in trust for Idaho citizens. Environmental programs like “Project Wild” that teach our children to “preserve our natural heritage” rather than protect our hunting and fishing heritage, helped produce a generation of zealots who argue that animal life has at least equal value to human life, and who demand even more free services that sportsmen are being forced to pay for.
Idaho Fish and Game spends millions of dollars of sportsman license fees and excise taxes every year pursuing non-game agendas solely because NGOs like TNC and AFWA say they should. For instance, at the direction of NGO’s in 2003 IDFG lobbied successfully to take authority to manage wildflowers away from Parks and Recreation.
The Pittman-Robertson/Dingall-Johnson excise taxes that both resident and non-resident Idaho sportsmen pay when they purchase guns, ammo and fishing tackle is not a gift from a benevolent federal government. These taxes are forwarded to our state fish and game management agencies to restore wild game and fish populations based on the number of sport licenses sold, and are as much a part of sportsmen’s contribution to the restoration and perpetuation of Idaho wildlife as the hunting and fishing license fees we pay.
The following chart shows the total dollars spent by each Bureau in FY 2008 and the percent of those dollars paid entirely by hunters and fishermen.
IDFG FY 2008 Actual Expenditures
…………………………Total Sports……Total $……% Paid by
……………………….. Fees + Tax……. Spent…….Sportsmen
Bureau
Administration………7,748,577……11,573,942……..66.9%
Communications……2,680,099…….3,271,572………81.9%
Enforcement…………9,307,757…….9,478,150………98.2%
Engineering……………816,945……….816,945…….100.0%
Fisheries…………….9,824,374……27,974,709*…….35.1%
Winter Feed**………2,888,874……..2,888,874…….100.0%
Nat. Resource………1,631,391……..3,349,159………48.7%
Wildlife……………..11,415,690……16,420,016………69.5%
Totals………………46,313,707…….75,773,368……..61.1%
*Includes $17 million in federal anadromous fish grants and dam mitigation money from Idaho Power, Bonneville Power, etc.
**Not a Bureau, Winter Feed is a collection of set-aside funds dedicated for specific purposes.
According to the FY 2008 Actual Expenditures Report available through January 29, 2009 at IDFG Headquarters, all money received and spent exclusively for nongame and endangered species management totaled $1.4 million of which $0.2 million was paid by sportsmen. Conservation Data Center expenditures added another $1.2 million for a total of only $2.4 million or only 3% of its total budget.
But because other non-game and CDC expenses are also included in the budgets of the various Bureaus with no mention of “nongame” or “CDC”, IDFG can pretend sportsmen are not paying for them. They ignore the fact that sportsman dollars and all grants not earmarked for nongame or endangered species fund a majority of the expenses in all but one of the Bureaus.
The IDFG has hired nongame biologists to “manage” over 1,000 recorded Idaho nongame vertebrates and invertebrates and accepted responsibility (and hired botanists and other specialists) to “manage” 2,800 Idaho plant species. Much of the funding burden for non-game programs is on the hunters and fishermen who foot the bills. With the exception of non-game elk license plates purchased by hunters, other sources of matching state money for federal non-game funds provide very few dollars.
A check of 33 higher-salaried so-called “Benefited Part Time” employees in FY 2008 (with assorted titles like “Staff Biologist” and “Conservation Educator”) reveals that only two of the 33 may help benefit game species that are harvested by hunters.
The remaining 31 consist of nongame biologists, botanists, GIS analysts and educators who are paid almost one million dollars plus benefits to supplement the staff in the Conservation Data Center or promote bird watching and similar non-hunting activities.
In addition to their wages and benefit costs, these non-game employees nearly double the requirement for office space, computers and other high-tech equipment, utilities, communications, maintenance, vehicle use, other infrastructure and capital outlay – all of which are in short supply – with no adequate source of income to pay those extra costs except hunters’ and fishermen’s license fees.
FY 2008 expenditures totaling $64,199,426 in six Bureaus required additional Administration costs of $11,573,942. Adding that 18% prorated administration cost to the $4.8 million spent just by the Non-game Wildlife and Natural Resource Policy Bureau raises the cost of those two programs to $5.7 million And because sportsman licenses and excise taxes pay 66.9% of the cost of administration that added another $578,435 to what NRPB and Non-game Wildlife cost sportsmen last year. Multiple activities and promotions of Non-game Wildlife and NRPB that are charged to Communications and Enforcement that are also paid for by sportsmen.
The claims that non-game programs are costing sportsmen either nothing or only a few thousand dollars are obviously not true.
IDFG Communications Specialists promote AFWA and TNC programs. By its own admission the IDFG agenda includes children and nature, climate change, the endangered species act, energy development, invasive species, urban sprawl, and wetlands.
And every year millions of Idaho sportsman dollars also pay for the purchase, maintenance and operation of IDFG-owned “wildlife management areas” and a host of other camping, boating and outdoor recreation facilities that are utilized primarily by non-sportsmen who pay little or nothing. In the Boise WMA alone, 73% of users in FY 2008 paid nothing so the 27% of sportsmen users were forced to pay 100% of the costs.
The IDFG also manages its own (not approved by the legislature) “wolf reintroduction” program. Instead of implementing Wolf Management Policy in accordance with the Idaho Wolf Conservation and Management Plan as required by Idaho Code Section 36-715, the Idaho F&G Commission unanimously approved a plan that pandered to wolf extremists by illegally changing the minimum desired wolf population to 20 breeding pairs and 518 wolves instead of using the statutory 15 breeding pairs (150 wolves).
Although the IWCMP plan ratified by the Legislature mandates that funding for wolf management, including wolf and prey species monitoring, will be provided by the federal government and wolf advocates or other outside sources, sportsmen bore part of the funding burden in FY 2008 and also suffer because wolves are decimating game herds in Idaho.
The IDFG budget is largely funded by sportsman dollars, but a great deal of the spending goes to thwart sportsman interests. That situation defies the Department’s mandate and must be corrected.
Note: for a revealing discussion of the evolution of non-game program funding and the culpable bureaucratic malfeasance at the Federal level, please see Secret Meetings, Wolves, Missing Money, and the Next Possible Director of US Fish and Wildlife Service by Jim Beers [here].
