Officials from Michigan's Fisheries division say further cutbacks on staffing and fish stocking are likely as the costs of its operations rise.
The division relies on license purchases 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 state budget adopted last week.
Some key Michigan lawmakers who are opposed to increased fees have said the Department of Natural Resources is mismanaged and shouldn't get more public funding.
Jim Francis, the coordinator of the Lake Erie Basin at Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources, said Fisheries is already struggling.
“I mean 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 Friday does not fix the long-term issues for the department but did offer one time funding from the game and fish fund, including $900,000 for critical infrastructure. This funding is not general funds, meaning it is restricted and can not pay wages or for fish food.
Fish stocking balance at risk “but our hands are tied”
The DNR is stocking over 20 million fish this year including Walleye, Rainbow Trout, Chinook Salmon and more. However, it’s unlikely this scale of stocking will be sustainable in the years coming, said Claramunt.
“We’re probably going to have to reduce our Chinook salmon egg pick by 50 percent,” 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.”
Reducing fish stocking may put some tourism-based economies at risk but it also puts the balance of the Great Lakes at risk as Salmon and other predator fish were partially stocked with intention to reduce the alewife populations, Jeremiah Blaauw, health stocking and marking biologist for the DNR, said.
“Alewifes were a non-native 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 just 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 predator fish, the alewife population became much more controlled and people also enjoyed hunting and eating these species. It was a win-win for the state, Blaauw said.
Fish stocking brings in over $4 billion into local economies in Michigan, he said. Much of this can be attributed to salmon and other sport fish that attract the tourists and anglers.
While some fish are able to keep up their populations naturally, fish stocking is still necessary in many fisheries across the state.
Mark Williams, executive director and founder of the Michigan’s Anglers Consortium, worries if there is a species collapse like there was a salmon collapse in Lake Huron in the early 2000s, many local economies could become strained. This collapse was from 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. “Roger City, Alpena, Oscoda, that devastated them. What happens if it happens in Lake Michigan? Then we’re really in trouble.”
Anglers say it’s simple, raise license fees for better fishing
Williams founded the Michigan’s Anglers Consortium to try and give anglers a voice in legislation and largely to support House Bill 5093, sponsored by Representative Curtis VanderWall.
As fishing license fees have stayed consistent since 2014, Michigan angler groups came together to write the bill. Originally, the bill 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, as it sits in committee now, allocates a higher percentage of the fishing license profits to the Fisheries Division and introduced a $5 hatchery stamp. This stamp would only be necessary for those fishing for species raised in the hatcheries and the profits 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 be used towards 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 license fee increases in general have not been considered even though the bill has a long list of supporters, mostly made up of the 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 Michigan legislation and political motives but plan to push for the bill again after the upcoming election. HB 5093 also included a fisheries oversight committee due to past criticisms about money mismanagement.
“We are hopeful that with this [November] election we would have legislators that are 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 fish hatcheries in Wisconsin and a 70 percent reduction in their 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.
Fisheries division head: cuts are coming
Other issues plaguing the DNR’s budget includes an increasing deficit and lack of reimbursement by the state for discounted licensing fees for seniors and other eligible residents, according to Randy 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 the Fiscal Year of 2024, the discounts totaled $2,408,500 for just senior licenses. The total amount 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 in the state of Michigan 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.”
With license 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.
