Most CA Upland Stamp $ Not Used for Upland
California recently announced that its art contest for the 2012-13 state upland game bird stamp will feature the band-tailed pigeon (Columba fasciata). Appropriate because looks like upland hunters who think their money is helping upland birds are the real pigeons here. Excerpts from this good article in the San Bernadino Sun:
Where does our Upland Bird Stamp money go? Karen Fothergill of the Department of Fish and Game in Sacramento has shepherded this program from its inception in 1993, and she can put her finger on every dollar and how it’s been spent since the beginning.
A career biologist with the agency, she’s not really happy with how the numbers break out. She recognizes that sportsmen would be shocked at how this money is spent.
Just some quick bullet points on things that made me just shake my head:
> About 1/3 of the $1.4 million raised by the Upland Bird Stamp each year is used by the Department of Fish and Game to cover its administrative and overhead costs. These are costs that don’t relate to actually doing anything good for upland birds or upland hunters – things like secretarial support, fish food for hatcheries, or paying the Controller’s office to write checks.
> The actual amount of money that gets back to the field, after all staff wages, benefits, and other costs are subtracted, is – the best I can deduce – about $400,000 each year.
> Of that, about $80,000 is allocated to buy farm-raised pheasants for release-hunts, a program a lot of us think is money thrown away on one-time events. So that leaves more than $300,000 per year to do good things for wild populations of quail, chukar, doves, pheasants and grouse statewide – about 20 cents on each dollar we spend.
> Of the $1.4 million, more than $500,000 is allocated to each of six department regions. The lowest allocation of money – to the tune of more than $30,000 this fiscal year – is for Region 6…the region where most southern California upland bird hunters spend all their time. This is the state’s largest region and the one that has the largest public quail and chukar habitat in the entire state. This is also the region that generates the bulk of the Upland Bird Stamp revenue.
> When I asked if the Department actually did any real science anymore, she only half-jokingly asked, “What is that?” She said the department once had a fishery biologist and a wildlife biologist for nearly every county in the state. There are no regional biologists any longer.
> Research, surveys, and habitat improvement work done for upland birds is at an all-time low, even with an Upland Bird Stamp designed to specifically fund that kind of work.
> Incredibly, the department’s budget is higher than it’s ever been because of constant increases in license and tag fees that have outstripped cost-of-living and inflation indexes, but those paying for those licenses are getting less and less in return for their investment because of a nightmarish bureaucracy that gobbles up the money.
Even though Cali’s not exactly known for its fiscal responsibility, this is BS! California hunters, give someone an earful over there!
More
> Word is that there are lot of birdies in Cali, as predicted, though hunting ain’t easy! (Is it ever?)
More: Stamp Contest
> It’s open to all U.S. residents age 18 and older, and entries are being accepted now until the Jan. 31, 2012 deadline. More info here.
Category: CA, Upland Bird Stamp
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Why does this not surprise me?