Weaknesses cited at Fish and Wildlife Department

DIF&W LogoThis is the third in a series of columns about the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife’s very-much-needed and very-exciting project to improve its communications with the public and, eventually, grow its market. Two outstanding and experienced national consultants, Mark Duda of Responsive Management and Jodi Valenta of Mill Creek Communications, have been retained to assist the agency with this project. I plan to follow this process very closely, attend as many of the meetings and events as I can, and tell you all about it, for two reasons. First, I’ve been making recommendations to improve communications at DIF&W for many years, and this year submitted legislation to re-establish the marketing position at the agency. Sponsored by Representative Bob Duchesne, the bill garnered a lot of support at its public hearing, including from sportsmen’s groups and tourism officials, and was held over to next year by the Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Committee, to see how it might be used to advance this new DIF&W project. Second, this project is all about you. And I want to give you a chance to participate.

DIF&W Weaknesses

Well, I got an earful! When I asked you to tell me what you see as weaknesses in the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, I got quite a response.

One typical comment was that the department “fails to listen to hunters out there observing (fish and game) first hand,” while others said that the agency pays too much attention to what one reader said was “every Tom, Dick, and Harry that think they know about fisheries and wildlife managers.”

Maine sportsmen are not in agreement on these and many other issues. I learned that first hand during my 18 years as executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine. It takes a lot of hard work to keep sportsmen working together on the same team. And too many enjoy sitting on the sidelines, complaining about everything, without taking any action to make the changes they think need to be made.

In my last outdoor news column on this project, I gave readers a chance to tell me what they saw as DIF&W’s weaknesses, by answering a question I posted in my Sportsmen Say Survey on my website, www.georgesmithmaine.com. Some emailed me their answer directly, some posted their responses at the end of the news column, and others spoke to me in person. Here’s some of what they told me.

Complaints about the warden service were common. One fellow asked, “Does the department fully understand the wardens’ role as ambassadors? Do they reinforce a culture of politeness, patience, and friendliness or one of humorless woods cop? In my view, more needs to be done to show and tell the positive interactions with the warden service and the license buying fee paying public. Animal Planet’s Northwoods Law is doing the Maine Warden Service, the Department, and Maine residents a disservice.”

One common complaint is that DIF&W is poorly managing deer, in the words of one reader, “overreacting to harsh winters by drastically reducing any deer permits.” Some feel that the agency is not paying enough attention to landowner problems with hunters, and as usual when I ask questions like this, many complained about the complexity of hunting and fishing rulebooks. And then there was this, from a bass angler:

The department does an incredibly poor job of representing one of the largest groups of outdoorsmen and perhaps the group that pours perhaps the most money into the state and local economies, the bass fisherman. Bass fishermen are “taxed without representation” by being forced to purchase tournament permits at exorbitant prices and get absolutely… nothing from the permit. It is ridiculous that they have to buy permits for tournaments and they return the valuable resources back into the lakes, rivers, and streams where caught after the tournament. The department is very weak in promoting bass fishing, which is world-class in Maine, and also representing bass fishermen let alone improving the bass fishing with stocking programs, habitat and spawning construction, and growing the sport.

Some complained about the costs of various licenses, including one hunter who wrote, “Cost!  $20 for a turkey stamp?  Wow.  Way to encourage turkey hunting!” I certainly agreed with this one, and have tried in the last two legislative sessions to eliminate the turkey hunting fee. We were able to cut the fee in half.

 

Mark Duda will be surveying Mainers about this and other issues, and hosting focus groups too, as this project progresses. In my next column on this project, I will share with you a thoughtful letter received in response to my question about DIF&W’s weaknesses.

My Thoughts

Here are some of the weaknesses I see inside and outside the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

Poor website. The agency really needs someone dedicated to the website (and the staff has been asking for this for ten years). Very little information is provided to any of us, either on the website or in other ways. I know that agency staff would like to share more information with us, but they don’t have any way to do that today.

Very little news is generated, partly because the media today doesn’t see hunting and fishing as deserving of regular news coverage. In 2014 the Maine Press Association gave me an award for writing the best sports blog in the state. I didn’t even know I was writing a sports blog! But the MPA has no category for hunting, fishing, and other outdoor news.

The agency no longer markets hunting and fishing. When Bill Pierce left his job as DIF&W’s marketing staffer about ten years ago, his job was abolished.

Sportsmen, and those in the hunting and fishing businesses, do not work well together. Sure, we can rally when challenged – like we did in the two bear referendums – but otherwise, not so much.

We have a history of not using science to guide decisions. Management strategies are entrenched. And I recognize that it will be difficult to get the staff and public to change this.

The agency has different management systems for wildlife and fisheries. We have lots of fisheries issues and problems that we’ve been unable to address or resolve, from invasive fish to genetics problems in the state’s hatcheries.

We failed to protect critically-important deer yards and lost the deer herd in the north woods, as well as the deer hunting industry. A lot more attention needs to be paid to habitat protection and enhancement, for deer and other important species. We also need to implement – soon – a strategy to reduce moose deaths from ticks, or we will risk the loss of both moose hunting and moose watching.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the agency desperately needs public funding to supplement the revenue provided by sportsmen. The fact that sportsmen have to fund all the programs and projects that serve the general public is causing resentment amongst the agency’s core constituency, and shortchanging important programs and projects.

Jodi Valenta offered DIF&W staffers a tip at the first conference: Look at your weaknesses and ask yourself whether you could open up opportunities by eliminating them. It is my hope that my effort to gather your thoughts on agency weaknesses will be accepted in a positive way, as just one step toward significant improvements at the agency that means so much to all of us.

 

George Smith

About George Smith

George stepped down at the end of 2010 after 18 years as the executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine to write full time. He writes a weekly editorial page column in the Kennebec Journal and Waterville Morning Sentinel, a weekly travel column in those same newspapers (with his wife Linda), monthly columns in The Maine Sportsman magazine, two outdoor news blogs (one on his website, georgesmithmaine.com, and one on the website of the Bangor Daily News), and special columns for many publications and newsletters. Islandport Press published a book of George's favorite columns, "A Life Lived Outdoors" in 2014. In 2014, George also won a Maine Press Association award for writing the state's bet sports blog. In 2016, Down East Books published George's book, Maine Sporting Camps, and Islandport Press published George and his wife Linda's travel book, Take It From ME, about their favorite Maine inns and restaurants.