Commentary: Has the Michigan Wildlife Council simply lost its way? – Outdoor News
Editor’s note: Russ Mason is a regular contributor to Outdoor News publications.
At a recent sportsmen’s breakfast in Lansing, I was surprised (and a little encouraged) when the event’s speaker asked hunters to stand together and demand better from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
It’s no secret that the always fragile partnership between hunters, anglers, trappers and the DNR seems to have broken. In no small part, this is because the agency increasingly has displayed a careless disregard towards the essential economic and management importance of hunting, fishing, and trapping.
Nowhere is this more evident than in its approach to shareholder engagement. For example, I double-checked my phone to assure that the April 25 Wildlife Council meeting was still scheduled at the Wolf Lake State Fish Hatchery in Mattawan. Although the hatchery grounds were crowded with children, parents, and teachers excited about seeing big fish, the meeting I drove two hours to attend had been canceled.
When I returned home, I again tapped “next meeting of the Michigan Wildlife Council” into my phone. The response was still April 25. Next, I went to the various council websites.
One indicated that the next meeting would be May 27 at the Flynn Pavillion on Belle Isle. Another reported that the next meeting would be June 6 at the Rose Lake Shooting Range in Bath. Lesson learned. In the future, I’ll email the DNR Marketing and Outreach Division directly before burning a half tank of gasoline. But obviously, that’s not my point.
MORE COVERAGE FROM MICHIGAN OUTDOOR NEWS:
Hunting, fishing license fee increases proposed in Michigan
Michigan NRC adjusting deer regulations that impact antlerless harvest, specialty hunts
Wildlife councils have demonstrable benefits in improving public perceptions of hunting and fishing. But in the absence of shareholder involvement, the activities of the Michigan Council have become less focused and probably less effective.
My experiences at the last two meetings suggest that instead of promoting the economic and conservation benefits of hunting to the general public, it now focuses on R3 (recruitment, retention, reactivation), particularly among minority groups.
To be clear, I don’t disagree that R3 is a worthwhile (if not demonstrably effective) concept. Nor do I think that encouraging under-represented groups to hunt and fish is a bad idea. Yet neither of these objectives, however worthy they may be, has anything to do with the legislated mandate of the council (Michigan Public Act No. 246 or 2013).
Hunters and anglers pay a $1 surcharge on every base license, hunt/fish combo license and all-species fishing license so that the Michigan Wildlife Council can accurately and effectively communicate the benefits of hunting, fishing, and trapping to the non-hunting, non-fishing, non-trapping public.
Perhaps the department is disinterested in engaging with its paying customers. Or maybe apathy towards the council’s mission is just bureaucratic indifference. Either way or for some other reason, the DNR and the Michigan Wildlife Council need a wake-up call from sportsmen and women.
As a start, here are three suggestions:
• Clean up the web presence; post all council business and updates on a single website (and eliminate the others);
• If cleanup is too difficult for whatever reason, then make sure that all of the sites post the same information (at the same time);
• Prompt posting of meeting notes probably would be helpful. At the April 10 meeting, for example, the new advertising agency for the council pitched three different advertising campaigns but the April 10 notes are nowhere to be found.
Most important, it probably wouldn’t hurt for the appointed council members to re-read the authorizing legislation to refresh their understanding of the council’s mandate.
The future of hunting, fishing, and trapping depend on the attitudes of the 95% of Americans that don’t hunt and the 85% that don’t fish. Flubbing the mission of the one strategy that has been shown to measurably improve those attitudes is simply unacceptable.
