One-time funding won’t fix financial strain for DNR’s Fisheries Division
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MARQUETTE -- Officials from the Fisheries Division of the Department of Natural Resources say further cutbacks on staffing and fish stocking are likely as the costs of operations rise.
The division relies on licenses for much of its budget, but the price has remained consistent for more than a decade. Only restricted, one-time funding was included in the latest state budget.
Some key lawmakers who oppose increased fees have said the DNR is mismanaged and shouldn't get more public funding.
Jim Francis, the coordinator of the Lake Erie Basin at the DNR, said Fisheries is already struggling.
"We are down to the bone and we're still looking at a budget deficit moving forward," he said.
Randy Claramunt, the Fisheries Division chief, said the state budget passed by the Legislature does not fix long-term problems for the department but did offer one-time funding from the game and fish fund, including $900,000 for critical infrastructure. That funding is restricted and cannot pay wages or pay for fish food.
The DNR is stocking over 20 million fish this year, including walleye, rainbow trout and Chinook salmon. However, it's unlikely this scale of stocking will be sustainable in coming years, said Claramunt.
"We're probably going to have to reduce our Chinook salmon egg pick by 50%," Claramunt said. "We will be putting the walleye fishery in Saginaw Bay in jeopardy by not stocking Chinook salmon. We don't ever want to change that balance based on budgets, but our hands are tied."
Reduced stocking may put some tourism-based economies at risk but also puts the balance of the Great Lakes at risk as salmon and other predator fish were partially stocked to reduce the alewife populations, Jeremiah Blaauw, the health stocking and marking biologist for the DNR, said.
"Alewifes were a nonnative species that came to Michigan in the '60s and '70s and we didn't have a biological predator to control their population," he said. "There would be thousands of pounds of dead alewife that would wash up onto the shores."
Blaauw said just the smell of the alewives washed up on beaches slowed tourism as people didn't want to visit. After introducing predators, the alewife population became much more controlled and people also enjoyed fishing for and eating these species. It was a win-win for the state, Blaauw said.
Stocking brings in over $4 billion to local economies in Michigan, he said. Much of this can be attributed to salmon and other sport fish that attract tourists and anglers.
While some fish are able to keep up their populations naturally, stocking is still necessary in many fisheries across the state.
Mark Williams, the executive director and founder of the Michigan's Anglers Consortium, said he worries if there is a species collapse -- like a a salmon collapse in Lake Huron in the early 2000s -- many local economies could become strained. That collapse was by an overpopulation of salmon which eliminated the alewife population. The salmon struggled to shift their diets and began to die out as well.
"When the salmon crashed in Lake Huron, that devastated the economy of those coastal towns," he said. "Rogers City, Alpena, Oscoda -- that devastated them. What happens if it happens in Lake Michigan? Then we're really in trouble."
Williams founded the Michigan's Anglers Consortium to give anglers a voice in legislation and largely to support a fee bill sponsored by Rep. Curtis VanderWall, R-Ludington.
As license fees have stayed consistent since 2014, angler groups came together to write a bill that originally included an increase of $2 for all licenses and a new $5 youth license. However to garner more support, these increases were dropped.
Williams said the bill would have allocated a higher percentage of the fishing license profits to the division and introduced a $5 hatchery stamp. The stamp would be necessary only for those fishing for species raised in the hatcheries, and the revenue would go directly to the Fisheries Division. With the stamp, those anglers could also use more rods than previously allowed to catch the sport fish.
He said this funding could also have been used for cormorant control and hiring more biologists. Biologists in Michigan currently oversee several thousand acres more of water than fisheries biologists in other states.
Ed Blissick of the consortium and president of the Great Lakes Salmon Initiative said fee increases in general have not been considered even though the bill has a long list of supporters, mostly anglers who would be the ones to pay the stamp fee.
"It got tremendous support, from the Keweenaw Peninsula to Southeast Michigan," he said. "Just about every fishing organization has signed on to support it so anglers universally across the state like this bill. It's quite simple: We pay a little more but we get better fishing in return. The opposition really comes in the House of Representatives."
Williams and Blissick said they attribute the impasse to current legislation and political motives but plan to push for the bill again after the upcoming election. The bill also included an oversight committee due to past criticisms about money mismanagement.
"We are hopeful that with this [November] election we would have legislators more friendly to the outdoor sportsmen and look at what stakeholders have done with this bill," Blissick said. "This bill isn't written by politicians, it's not written by the DNR, it's written by anglers to improve angling in Michigan."
He said with the recent closure of two hatcheries in Wisconsin and a 70% reduction in that state's muskellunge stocking, Michigan residents should see this as a warning sign.
"It is exactly what's going to happen in Michigan next year if we don't see some increase in funding," Blissick said.
Other issues plaguing the DNR's budget includes an increasing deficit and lack of reimbursement by the state for discounted fees for seniors and other eligible residents, according to Claramunt.
"Hunting and fishing discounts are to be reimbursed by the general fund via statute but this has not occurred," Claramunt said. "The department has requested these funds based on FY 2024 license sales and, to my knowledge, the request has not been approved."
For fiscal year 2024, the discounts totaled $2,408,500 just for senior licenses. The total that should have been eligible for reimbursement was close to three million.
This is not the first year the Fisheries Division has not been reimbursed, Claramunt said.
"The people want these discounts, and I agree with them. I think they're great," he said. "But they didn't want the opportunities to be lost because it cuts into the funding."
"Therefore, general tax dollars should reimburse those discounts. The statue doesn't have enough teeth to make it happen," he said.
With fees not increasing, no reimbursements in sight, a bill stuck in committee and inflation hitting the department hard, he said cuts can definitely be expected.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Anna Barnes is an environmental reporting intern through a partnership with the MSU Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, Capital News Service and Michigan Public. This story was produced for Michigan Public.