LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Excellent article Thanks for the excellent article. I
Avid saltwater fisherman About your article in May/June
issue of TIDE — I have been an avid saltwater fisherman for more than 70 years and I agree with the premise of a saltwater fishing license, as you so elo- quently put it. However, I have to mention that in all fairness, the fees collected from the New York fisher- men, instead of going into a fund for marine fisheries
as intended, was
instead put into the General Fund of the state before the license was repealed. You didn’t mention that!
William H Woodroffe, Sr. New York
Editor. . . Mr. Woodroffe — It sounds as if we agree in all respects on the license. However, I do need to point out that one of your statements was in error. The fees from New York’s saltwater license were, in fact, all deposited into the Marine Resources Account within New York’s Conservation Fund, for the sole use of the Department of Environmental Conser- vation’s Marine Bureau. Lifetime license fees were handled a little differently. Those were placed in a trust fund and invested, with all of the income from such investments, to be deposited in the Marine Resources Account. You are not alone in believing that license fees went to the General Fund. That was a false story that was created and perpetuated by some of the organiza- tions leading the fight against the license, who were trying to get anglers to rise up in opposition to the license. However, as the old advice goes, “If you’re going to tell a lie, tell a big lie, and repeat it often, until people believe that it’s the truth.” Magazines that should have known bet- ter, along with countless Internet posters, repeated the false information until a lot of anglers thought that it was true. However, the law that created the license also dictated where the funds must be deposited, and that law specified the Marine Resources Account, not the General Fund.
www.joincca.org
don’t fish, but joined CCA to help protect fish runs. I’m thinking of sup- porting an organization more focused on wild fish and less on hatcheries. In Oregon, onshore fisherman along our rivers are a significant problem because of the trash they leave. Volunteers at some parks pick up their trash daily. Maybe CCA can do more to educate fishermen. Some just don’t want to help pay for their sport and want oth- ers to clean-up their mess!
Dave Kruse Oregon
In agreement
I read with interest your lead edi- torial about a “free lunch.” I couldn’t agree with you more about being willing to financially support our saltwater effort, and I have always wondered why we didn’t institute a saltwater license to raise cash to manage the resource. Saltwater fisher- men (although I am one) always seemed like freeloaders. Two issues seem worthy of contin- ued discussion with respect to those licenses: Number one: They seemed to be instituted in a big rush in the Northeast. All of a sudden, when we all fell on hard times, the licenses were instituted state by state here. It didn’t seem that any state talked to any other and there was a lot of confusion as to where you can fish with what. The purpose and long-term investment was not communicated well by our government departments.
Number two: In Connecticut, the saltwater licensing coincided with a money grab by the legislature, raiding almost all funds. No wonder it was considered just another tax. If our DEP could control all the funds and use them for managing the saltwater resource, that would be one thing. But that is not the way it appears to happen here.
In closing, our game/fish manage- ment departments need to communi- cate intentions much more clearly so there is not so much haze surrounding moves of this sort. In my opinion, we will never get a dedicated funding source for fish and game here in at least Connecticut, so almost every “fee” will feel like another tax. This mandates even more so that F&G departments communicate their inten- tions to their sportsmen base. There are
TIDE
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