Habitat and Lands:
Hunting in State Owned lands - NO NET LOSS of lands for hunting

 4/29/06: Senate bill on Special Order Tuesday, May 2, 2006. House bill in Senate messages.

4/25/06: Senate bill passed Senate Judiciary: HB265 passed House Floor, now in Senate messages. Senate bill no doubt will be pulled from remaining commitees and will be on Senate Floor calendar soon.

4/22/06: SB430 was amended on 4/18 to close the hunting on state parks loophole and now exempts state parks from the "no net loss" inventory premise.

The HB265, House version is on the House floor calendar, Special order, Monday 4/24/06 and is supposed to be amended with the Senate language.

This legislation opens up lands owned, managed, or leased by Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, water management districts, or state agencies, to hunters.

4/14/06: The bill calls for a "no net loss" of public hunting acreage on publicly owned lands. So if any of the state agencies, districts, or FWCC shut down some public lands to hunting, they have to coordinate and cooperate with each other and open up same amount of closed lands, to hunting, in the same region. The bill is supposed to be amended 4/18/06 to exempt state parks from the no net loss inventory.

Here is a letter sent by Doug Sphar, Turtle Coast Group to legislators:

 

April 4, 2006

 

Representative Don Brown

400 House Office Bldg.

402 S. Monroe St.

Tallahassee, FL 32399-1300

 

 

Dear Representative Brown,

 

I am writing in opposition to House Bill 265 - Hunting Lands.  I have particular concern about the no net loss of hunting lands provision of that bill.  The whole premise of this bill seems at odds with Florida’s evolving demographics and hunting statistics provided by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

 

At the 2005 Summit on the Future of Hunting in Florida, FWC Director Ken Haddad presented some startling statistics in a presentation titled “Florida’s Hunting Future: An FWC Reality Check” (available at the FWC website).  Mr. Haddad noted the following:

 

§         Since 1985 the number of licensed hunters has decreased from 260,000 to 130,000

§         Licensed hunters make up only 0.8% of Florida’s population

§         Public hunting lands have been steadily increasing in Florida.  Florida is 9^th in state-owned hunting lands.

§         Florida is 15^th in the nation in public land per hunter (31 acres).

§         There are 151 public hunting areas in the WMA system totaling 5.6 million acres.

§         Wildlife viewing produces $1.8 billion of annual economic activity compared to only $0.747 billion for hunting and 7.5 billion for recreational fishing

§         Hunting revenues make up only 5% of the FWC budget

 

Representative Brown, these statistics from FWC, an organization that is certainly an advocate for hunting, present a stark reality of a steadily declining population of hunters. A no net loss of hunting lands mandate would penalize the rapidly growing population of passive, nature based recreation users while catering to a dramatically dwindling population of consumptive users (only about 130,000 licensed hunters in 2005).  When a parcel becomes a WMA, hunters basically control the property during Florida's prime outdoors months of October through April.  Passive users are relegated to the hot, wet, mosquito infested summer months.  Ecotourism is increasingly important to Florida’s economy and those providers, too, need access to public wilderness during the prime outdoors months.

 

Given these statistics, I am interested in hearing how you reconcile the need for this bill that you sponsor – particularly in view to the dramatic and continuing decrease in hunters.

 

Yours truly,

Turtle Coast Group
Doug Sphar