The session is winding down, and sportsmen's issues are dwindling down to the final few bills.
The Good:
HB2: The budget includes significant investments in FWP's ability to manage wildlife, update old & worn out equipment as well as increase personnel in key areas such as grizzly bear conflict managers, wolf specialists, elk/deer planners and other FTE's. The budget also restores better warden funding that the past budget, which cratered enforcement and made our wardens do a lot of fence fixing & bird counts rather than focus on enforcing game law. New construction projects in Glasgow, Lewistown, Missoula and a few other places will occur to improve meeting facilities across Montana, and Fisheries had their budget restored. Parks fared well as well.
DNRC gets a lot of increased personnel for the Good Neighbor Authority, which will help improve forest health on public lands. DNRC's access specialist is moving from a temporary position to a permanent one which is fantastic. We've been trying to do this for a couple of years, and finally were able to get an amendment on the budget to do so. This amendment was stripped in the House, but added back again by the Senate, and we expect it to stay.
HB 5: This bill contains Habitat Montana, Governor's Tags funding, Future Fisheries, Upland Game Bird Enhancement Program and a few other habitat programs, as well as other capitol expenditures. It just cleared Senate Finance and Claims, and should be approved by the full senate this week or early next week.
HB 10: This bill contains $10 million for a new ALS website. The current ALS site is 20 years old and is need of scrapping. The new site should be mobile friendly, much better interface, and easier to use as well as not crashing every-time there is a draw. That bill is still in Senate Finance and Claims, but looks good right now.
SB 341: This bill sets up a new program to try and increase access to landlocked public land through short -term agreements between landowners and FWP. The agreements are capped at $15K, just like Block Management and will be negotiated between FWP/DNRC's Access Specialist and the landowner, with PL/PW looking over the agreements and the final decision resting with the Director of FWP.
The Bad:
HB 550: This would have made it harder to prove what roads had been using gas tax monies to maintenance, which help establish provenance on what roads are public and what roads are not. We were able to kill it on the Senate Floor after massive action from a number of groups (MWF, BHA, MSA, EMWH, PLWA, etc). The bill cleared the House easily, and it looked like it was destined for passage. The sheer volume of folks speaking up was impressive, and led to it's ultimate demise.
HB 265: Passed the Legislature, headed to the Governor's office. This bill re-injects politics back in to Habitat Montana Conservation easements after the Governor went to the Supreme Court to decrease the amount of politics going on with the program. Every sporting organization in the state opposed this bil, including RMEF, MWF, MTWSF, MDF, DU, PF, NWTF, TRCP, MTBHA, WSF, MBA, MSA, MTTU, and a bunch more I'm sure I'm forgetting.
HJ 18: This is the shoulder season resolution that calls for a war on elk for 6 months out of the year regardless of where they are, or what the population objective or trend looks like. It was amended to be slightly better, but then that doesn't mean it was worth supporting. Amendments stripped out part hunting and added a directive to have fwp publish a list of landowners who are participating, as well as an amendment calling to open shoulder seasons to public land. The Legislature's inability to listen to sportsmen was quite evident with this bill, as the public record shows.
HB 132: The bill that would turn all bison into livestock, even YNP bison, cleared the legislature and is headed to the Governor's desk. This bill was brought by the Montana Association of Counties, in the hopes that they could keep wild bison from ever being established anywhere in the state.
HB 332: This bill would give county commissioners veto authority on bison translocation, upending over 100 years of wildlife management policies and programs in favor of the black-helicopter approach to wildlife conservation. This bill has been vetoed three times before. In 2011, Governor Schweitzer gave it the branding iron, and then in 2013 & 2015, Governor Bullock vetoed the bill.
HB 161: This bill would have taken the public out of public wildlife by disallowing FWP from using public comment on a variety of management decisions related to elk, deer, pronghorn, bear, wolves, etc. The bill died in committee, barely.
SB 174: Crossbows! This would have allowed crossbows to be used by people over 70 or who were disabled. It was killed on the Senate floor.
HB 752: This bill would have forced FWP to spend millions on predator eradication programs to try and save sage grouse rather than invest in habitat conservation, which actually helps keep the bird off of the ESA. It was tabled quickly.
The Ugly:
SB 301: This is a bill that MWF has been trying to get passed for a decade or more. It would have made it much more difficult to illegally gate county roads and would have given county attorneys and commissions much better tools to ensure roads that are public stay open. The bill sailed through the Senate with a 45-5 vote, but was tabled in House Judiciary - a kill committee.
SB 224: This bill would have increased the fine for illegally gating a county road from $10 per day to $80, based on inflationary rates. The bill was widely supported by County Attorneys, County Commissioners and the MT Association of Counties, but was sent to House Judiciary in order to die as well.
SB 127 - a great bill to make it illegal to sell wildlife GPS data for specific animals cleared the senate, only to be killed in the House FWP committee.
SB 349 - This was a companion bill to SB 127 and it too was summarily killed in House FWP.
HB 760: This study bill would have set up an interim discussion about modernizing travel on State Trust Lands by focusing on how to make the GIS/CADASTRAL overlay for state trust roads match other road designations/closures. The bill was supported by Ag, Motorized users, quiet recreation & sporting organizations. It was heard, then executed in House Natural Resources.
There is a lot more of the session to go. While we're winding down and expect to be out in 2 weeks or so, it's important to note that there are still a lot of games being played with the access bills, the budget and other priorities for hunters, anglers and conservationists. Fish & Wildlife Commission appointments happen tomorrow, as well as action on about 1 dozen bills that need to move or will end up dying.
