Had a long conversation with him yesterday and I think he's got some direction to be more responsive to landowners dealing with over-abundance on private land, but he's clearly looking for solutions here. One thing he told me was akin to recognizing that their solutions weren't popular (HB 505 in particular) so he's looking at the public and especially the engaged hunting groups to help find some solutions, alongside agriculture and outfitters.
Season setting is coming up quickly, so there's a great opportunity to work locally and get your suggestions in to the local bio's and work with your local commissioner. This is where I see the most opportunity to change things from the status quo to a more thoughtful process. I doubt the commission is willing to keep the status quo, and so we can either rely on government to make changes and we accept that, or we focus on the changes we want to see, and bring the commission to our positions.
The EMP revamp is still coming up this year, so again - good way to engage in the process especially on fuyture management towards better public land hunting.
Rulemaking on all the legislation that passed is coming up as well.
SB 58 doubled the cap on Block Management payments from $25K to $50K and the budget had an extra $7 million for the program as well as a handful of new hunt techs to help adminsiter. PLPW is going to be looking at Block Mgt in light of SB 58, and will be making rule changes, etc. I do think this process is going to be a good one based on conversations with the chairman and
@Eric Albus.
HB 596 reforms the 454 program starting in 2024
PAL Act agreements are about to hit 500K acres of previously landlocked public land being open to hunting access.
The draw is smooth and painless for the first time in years (this is sarcasm).