[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON Feb-27-06 AT 07:59AM (EST)[/font][p]The Dingle-Johnson Act, also called the Sport Fish Restoration Act, is a very simlar program to Pittman-Robertson, and has been a major funding source for fisheries work since 1950. An amendment to D0-J in the mid-1980’s, also added a small portion of the federal fuel tax to the same fund, which has been a major factor in state agencies being able to acquire and develop public fishing access sites. Modern fish and wildlife management would be very different without all these plans; and we’d all be paying much, much more for licenses, gate and launch fees, etc. This all goes back to the argument about what really is the bare minimum that is the right amount for those fees to be. That figure is a great deal higher than most of us ever realize.

As for the idea of funds getting siphoned off before they get to the projects for which the money was intended, sadly that does happen way too much in our government. But it has been my observation over the years that it happens far less in special funds set up for parks and recreation and natural resource work. I know that the Indiana DNR fisheries staff is very much tuned to the interests of anglers; from which their funding is derived. At the county owned facility where I work, our local agency owns and operates the lake and park facilities. The state, realizing that such a lare body of water provides a great opportunity for public fishing, provides fisheries management expertise for the lake. This is a sometimes strained relationship, in that our local Board tends to view those visiting anglers like outsiders that could be charged more for access. But the DNR folks keep a close eye of the rates that are charged for boating fees and park entrance fees. They always make know their intent that if those fees get higher than what seems to be the average in the region, such as on the state reservoirs, they will withdraw the fisheries management support. Their stance on this is based on the fact that some of the money they use in that management comes from license sales, and that licensed anglers deserve not to be plucked like chickens. I happen to agree with IDNR on this and we have managed to get along quire well. Some of the lakes that people on this board complain about having high fees no longer or never have received fisheries services from IDNR, so someone is looking out for you there. Some of you guys should thank them sometime instead of knocking them.

Finally, and I’m going to back out of this thread and get back to work, here’s a humorous, but mabe pretty true twist on an old saying that I ran across recently.

“If you give a man a fish, you will feed him for a day; but if you teach him how to fish he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.”