The Wild Side for March 9
| OUTDOORS EXTRAS |
| NAVIGATION
RESOURCES HUNTING FISHING Louisiana Records SUBMISSIONS |
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A weekend ago, Gov. Bobby Jindal told a standing-room-only crowd at the Coastal Conservation Association-Louisiana convention that coastal restoration projects must be started immediately.
He said the projects are critical to our state’s economic development, crucial for our infrastructure and good for the overall health of our valuable marshland and barrier island habitats.
Maybe our new governor will tackle other outdoors issues soon after he’s through with the Legislature’s second special session and the regular session this year.
Let’s hope he comes with a plan to better fund the Depart ment of Wildlife and Fisheries.
With most of Wildlife and Fisheries’ hierarchy attending — new LDWF secretary Robert Barham received CCA-Louisiana’s Conservation Award — it would have been a good time to say he plans to back the funding former Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s administration derailed in last year’s legislative session.
Remember that plan? It called for the LDWF to receive one twentieth of one cent of the state sales tax, between $40-$44 million annually, for a state agency that receives little if any general fund money. The only time the LDWF gets general fund money is for special projects, and those have been few and far between in the last decade.
Our new governor could have presented a plan for the state to buy Elmer’s Island, a coastal stretch of near 1,400 acres that was accessible to fishermen, campers and beachcombers for years, but has been closed for the past five years.
These moves might fall on a low rung on the priority ladder — we have greater problems — but these two are “can-do” moves.
While we’re at it, the LDWF needs more money to control invasive species, the old nemeses like hydrilla and water hyacinth, and the new, growing problems with giant and common salvinia. There is a proffered plan to raise funds for this control to $8 million, but that’s far short of the more than $40 million Florida spends.
Just so the new administration understands, sportsmen of our state pump around $280 million into the state sales tax pot. By the latest economic survey, hunting and fishing activities provided 63,000 jobs in our state. And (something past surveys have missed) farmers supplement their steadily decreasing income from hunting leases.
So it doesn’t appear we’re begging: those levels of economic involvement didn’t start one, two or three years ago. It’s been happening for decades, and sportsmen’s pleas for more money for fish stocking, boat launches, game and fish studies, aquatic plant control and increased enforcement largely have been ignored.
Returning $40-$44 million annually is a small percentage of the total economic impact our outdoors pursuits mean for underfunded programs in our state.
What’s been tough is to make some folks understand that the state agency that oversees these outdoors pursuits are underfunded, too.
