Rotary to welcome Game and Fish commissioner

Arkansas Game and Fish Commissioner JD Neely, a Camden resident, paid a virtual visit to the El Dorado Rotary Club yesterday for their regular meeting.

The Rotary Club hasn’t met in person since March, when cases of COVID-19 began spreading throughout Arkansas. At yesterday’s meeting, Dr. Brian Jones said the group will consider moving back to in-person meetings in July, depending on Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s directives for ‘Phase 2’ of the state’s post-COVID reopening.

Neely, who was appointed to the AGFC in 2018 by Hutchinson, provided an update on how the Commission has been operating throughout the ongoing pandemic, as well as continuing education and conservation efforts.

Throughout the pandemic, Hutchinson has advocated for Arkansans to spend time outdoors. Neely said the state has seen a significant increase in fishing licenses sold this year. The governor has also proclaimed that from noon on Friday, June 12, through midnight Saturday, June 14, Arkansans may fish for free, without a license.

“We’re fortunate here in Arkansas to have a vast free source of public lands, rivers, streams. Arkansans have poured out during this COVID time to enjoy the outdoors. … There are record numbers of boats, kayaks, campers on the road. You see everybody going outdoors,” he said. “We have tried to promote fishing as best we can in the state.”

Mattocks Pond, located at Mattocks Park at 1205 Burnside St. in El Dorado, was recently stocked with 1,000 catfish, Neely said. While the pond is a Family and Community Fishing Program pond, which is oriented toward those younger than 16 or older than 65, anyone may fish there so long as they are licensed and accompanied by someone in the under 16 or older than 65 demographics.

“Mattocks Pond is ready for fishing,” Neely said.

The AGFC is working to increase opportunities for bank fishing, which doesn’t require a boat, Neely said.

“Fishing is an easy way to get a kid introduced to the outdoors, so we

continue to look for ways we can find bank fishing opportunities,” he said. “That’s a big deal right now.”

Educational outreach has been ongoing despite the pandemic. Virtual events, social media posts and even some drivethrough educational programming has continued locally.

Last week, the AGFC held a drive-through wildlife event in El Dorado, and the turnout included 175 vehicles with over 600 people in all; Laura Rogers, AGFC’s Southeast Regional Educator, said even despite the exhibit continuing half an hour after it was scheduled to end, staffers on hand still had to turn people away.

Neely said the AGFC’s education strategy takes the ‘R3’ approach, focusing on recruitment, retention and reactivation. According to the United State Fish and Wildlife Service, recruitment is meant to bring new participants into outdoor recreation; retention helps outdoor recreationists build their skills in order to be able to practice independently; and reactivation is meant to bring lapsed outdoor recreationists back into the fold.

“We want to improve opportunities for youth, minorities, disabled people. Game and Fish is passionate about our efforts to bring this new generation back online,” Neely said. “We’ve got a whole division on the education side.”

Neely said Union County AGFC officers are working to organize a youth recruitment event locally now. He noted that online interaction has been successful during the pandemic.

“They’re able to go online and learn about plants, animals, fisheries. The interaction of all this has been a great thing for our students,” he said.

In ongoing efforts, the AGFC is entering its second year of performing statewide forest health assessments, where foresters, both AGFC and private, do an inventory of woodlands in the state to inspect for disease and check the understory habitat to ensure wildlife there is thriving.

Neely, a forester himself, said these efforts are important to ensure future generations can enjoy the beauty and wildlife of the Natural State.

“Where we see problems, we’re making recommendations to fix these problems for years to come,” he said. “We’re looking down the road for our kids and our grandkids to make sure these lands are healthy and in good shape … so when things are down the road, we’ve left it better than we found it.”

The AGFC is also working to tackle the ongoing problems faced by farmers, hunters and landowners around Arkansas and the country caused by feral hogs. An invasive species, the AGFC considers feral hogs to be a public nuisance and threat.

Native species’ habitats can be devastated by the hogs’ rooting and wallowing habits, and they are known to eat domestic animals, including young livestock, as well as other native species. Private landowners are allowed to kill or trap feral hogs on their land any time, and some public lands allow hunters to kill feral hogs encountered during regular hunting seasons.

“The feral hog problem continues to be bad,” Neely said. “It’s a problem that hit our landscape about 20 years ago. We’ve always had hogs, but around 20 years ago, we really saw this explosion onto the landscape, and they’re bad.”

The AGFC has implemented large-scale trapping for feral hogs through its Feral Hog Task Force. Neely said large-scale trapping has been proven to be the most effective counter to the hogs, which often travel in large sounders, or family groups.

“Feral hogs love when it gets dry and you start to water the grass, like at golf courses. They’re going to go at night and tear those golf courses to pieces,” Neely said, recounting when the AGFC recently trapped a large group of the hogs at the Smackover Country Club. “So we drop game traps, set up a camera, get the hogs into the area with feed, and when they’ve got 99% of the sounder group in the trap, they’ll trigger it with their phones. We can catch a large number of hogs at one time. It’s proven to be the most effective way to deal with them, but it’s still a lot of work.”

Neely said the AGFC recently updated some of their hunting guidelines for the upcoming season, including moving the date and extending the turkey season. For a full list of upcoming hunting dates, see agfc.com/en/hunting.

Neely also announced that the local Mahony family will be inducted into the Arkansas Outdoor Hall of Fame in a ceremony scheduled for Aug. 29 in Little Rock. According to a press release from the AGFC’s Director of Events, the Mahonys helped to acquire the 65,000 acre National Wildlife Refuge in Felsenthal, among other conservation efforts.

“It’s just a small tribute to the great work the Mahony family has done for not only Union County but all of Arkansas,” Neely said. “Theirs is a legacy that will be felt for many generations.”

The Rotary Club will meet again via Zoom on June 22. Walter E. Hussman, publisher for WEHCO Media, Inc., the

News-Times’ parent company, will be the speaker.