Wildlife Division controversy among top stories of year
Among the more remarkable occurrences of 2017 involved a contingent of Ohio citizens asking for, in essence, a tax increase on their activities and the government refusing to give it to them.
The bid for an increase in resident fishing and hunting licenses — sought by numerous sportsmen’s groups to help shore up an ostensibly revenue-challenged Ohio Division of Wildlife — was shot down initially by the Kasich administration in the spring and by the Ohio General Assembly in late June.
The legislature, with the administration’s blessing, did increase fees moderately on nonresident licenses and permits. The income generated isn’t expected to substantially reduce the division’s projected shortfalls.
What followed in July was the firing of the wildlife chief by James Zehringer, director of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, and the exiling of top aides. The chief and aides were replaced with persons purportedly expected to be more in sync with the political aims of the department than with the grassroots desires of Ohio’s hunters, trappers, fishermen and wildlife watchers.
Five former wildlife chiefs, including one who had worked long and hard as a kind of sportsmen’s liaison for Gov. John Kasich before tendering his resignation over the matter, made it known publicly they were adamantly opposed to what they saw as the undermining of the wildlife division as an agency most responsive to the license-buying citizens of Ohio. License- and permit-buyers, it should be said, pay directly or indirectly for virtually the entire cost of operations.
Kasich's term will end about a year from now. Word is that behind the scenes gubernatorial candidates of both blue and red persuasions are assuring sportsmen’s groups they will work to return the wildlife division to a less subservient status.
And so on.
• Blooms of bluegreen algae, which produce potentially deadly toxins, continued to plague many of Ohio’s inland lakes. A voluntary plan concocted by Ohio’s executive branch and stakeholders to reduce the levels of algae-nourishing phosphorous pouring into Lake Erie mostly from farm runoff hasn’t done much, said the Ohio Environmental Council and the National Wildlife Federation in separate tracts.
• A significant algae bloom, ensuring the creation of so-called dead zones harmful to fish and other life, occurred on Lake Erie during the summer, though not as extreme as in 2014. In other words, Toledo residents were able to drink city water throughout.
• The rusty-patched bumblebee, its numbers dwindling throughout North America, possibly as a result of pesticide use, was included on Ohio’s list of endangered species. The wildlife division was among the groups that began attempts to raise awareness about North America’s crashing population of monarch butterflies.
• The Ohio Air National Guard scrapped its plan to build a wind turbine at Camp Perry, ending a five-year battle with birding groups that appeared to be heading for a lawsuit. The turbine, the groups said, threatened harm to birds along one of the most significant migratory routes in North America.
• Ohio hunters reported taking about 182,000 deer by last season’s end. That was fewer than the previous year’s total but still within the wildlife division’s target for managing the state’s whitetail population. Turkey hunters, taking advantage of a population swollen by a cicada hatch the previous year, enjoyed a strong spring.
• Lake Erie had a terrific walleye hatch in 2017 and a good yellow perch hatch. But yellow perch fishing has deteriorated in the deeper basins away from the lake’s shallow western end, so much so that commercial fishermen have agreed, under threat of legislation, to voluntarily stop netting perch in a large area off Fairport Harbor.
• David Funk of Columbus on July 1 pulled a flathead catfish weighing nearly 70 pounds from Hoover Reservoir, where recent-year stockings of blue catfish are growing toward formidable size. Joe Hatfield of Westerville landed an almost 30-pound blue at Hoover during the summer.
• A Lorain fisherman caught a state-record lake trout while trolling Lake Erie for walleye on Dec. 1.