COMMENTARY: The Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resource's budget comes from license sales, fees and federal funds, much of it via matching federal dollars from excise taxes paid by the public. In other words, hunters, shooters, anglers and boaters, as well as those who use paid facilities at state parks, support the ADCNR and all of its wonderful programs in this outdoors-rich state.
But the divisions managed by ADCNR--State Parks, Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries, Marine Resources and State Lands – are almost out of money. How can this be, considering the millions that outdoors-minded Alabama residents as well as visiting hunter and anglers have poured in?
It's not mismanagement on the part of the department. It's simple "misappropriation" by the state legislature. (When an individual does this, it's known as "theft".)
"We don't get any General Fund money, but the Legislature has taken more than $27 million through administrative transfers in the last four years," ADCNR Commissioner N. Gunter Guy said in a recent public presentation. "We can no longer sustain these types of transfers. In the three budgets that have been proposed this year, they have proposed transfers from our agency of $5.4 million, $9.2 million, and in this last special session it was $18.3 million."
Guy says that unless the public--you and me and everyone who has in good faith paid for our hunting licenses, fishing licenses, boat registrations and the many taxes especially placed on hunting, fishing, shooting and boating gear, and who is now being robbed by the legislators of Alabama--rises up and refuses to allow this remarkable misfeasance, severe cuts to services must result, as well as job losses to our wildlife and fishery biologists, wildlife law enforcement and many others.
"With cuts of $18.3 million and that magnitude, we're also talking about closures of (Wildlife Management Areas) and other Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries operations; closures of Forever Wild operations and facilities; closures of Marine Resources Division operations and facilities on the coast; closures of lands and coastal programs; and loss of significant federal funding."
These are not obscure and useless social programs set up to support those who refuse to work. They are programs and services and facilities that thousands of hard-working, tax-paying Alabama families as well as visitors from other states enjoy every year--it's not inaccurate to say the single most appreciated feature of our state outside its boundaries is the remarkable outdoors opportunities here. To say nothing of the fact that the traditions of hunting and fishing have very deep roots here, with generations of families tied to the land and water and its natural bounty.
Another aspect of the looming cuts pointed out by Chuck Sykes, Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Director, is the effect on federal funds already distributed to WFF and Marine Resources. For every dollar in license sales, $3 in matching funds comes from Pittman-Robertson Act and Sport Fish Restoration money.
"If the Legislature takes $1 from either Marine Resources or Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries, it puts us in diversion," Sykes said. "That means we stand to have to send back $25 million to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service because we've violated the Pittman-Robertson Act and the Sportfish Restoration Act by using these dollars for something other than wildlife."
Sykes puts it succinctly: "The problem is that is hunters' and fishermen's money. They have paid into the system. This is not General Fund money. So they are basically robbing the hunters and fishermen, period."
Sykes said if WFF staff is furloughed, gates will be locked. WMAs will be closed. Law enforcement officers won't be available to respond to poaching or trespassing complaints.
The solution is us. If each of us who buy a hunting and fishing license today were to send an email or make a phone call to their legislator, this insane business could be blocked. It won't solve the state's budget crisis, to be sure--that would require some real backbone on the part of our elected representatives--but it will prevent this remarkable misuse of public funds.
Go here to see the contact info for your legislators in both House and Senate:
Alabama Legislature
(Thanks to David Rainer, ACDNR, for information used in this column.)
