On Saturday mornings I like to listen to outdoors radio with Dan Small, and this morning they had a guest from Bayfield area who operated one of the hatcheries in the area and had brought up that funding was being held up for fish hatcheries that would start in the beginning of their fiscal year which would be July to the tune of 7.9 million dollars. He had brought up some very interesting stats.... in 2005 a 50 lb bag of fish food largely used by most all fish hatcheries in the state cost $16.... today the same bag of food is $55, also there hasn't been any licensing or permit fee increases in 22 years either. Now I don't carry any kind of college degree and I'm not a rocket scientist either but not to hard to figure out either a full or a partial solution to the problem but legislators refuse to implement it. Snowmobiling facing similar shortfalls with an easy solution to alleviate the shortfalls as well. Nothing is free in this world and we cant enjoy the outdoors as we would like to without some kind of conservation and effort to maintain it. I guess I just don't understand the push back against correcting or addressing the shortfalls, it just boggles the mind. It seems like people just think....its there...it should and will take care of itself, I just don't get it.
I do have to laugh though as people will certainly gripe about any licensing/permit fee increases, and I am going to use golf as an example and not to pick on any of you who do golf. But golfers are willing to pay a fee to use someone's maintained course to hit a ball into a hole, add a cart rental on to that for what? a couple hours of gratification only to have to pay again the next time to play? and that's only one of many things people are willing to pay for to enjoy for hours or a day, those fees exist because the place isn't going to take care of itself, but that's ok, talk about increasing licensing/ permit fees and instant push back except from those who understand conservation takes money and effort to maintain and is not free.
I do have to laugh though as people will certainly gripe about any licensing/permit fee increases, and I am going to use golf as an example and not to pick on any of you who do golf. But golfers are willing to pay a fee to use someone's maintained course to hit a ball into a hole, add a cart rental on to that for what? a couple hours of gratification only to have to pay again the next time to play? and that's only one of many things people are willing to pay for to enjoy for hours or a day, those fees exist because the place isn't going to take care of itself, but that's ok, talk about increasing licensing/ permit fees and instant push back except from those who understand conservation takes money and effort to maintain and is not free.
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