Proposed fee would aid popular program
An elongated season and the liberal bag limits provided by Texas’ Managed Lands Deer Program have given participating landowners and hunters plenty to boast about for over two decades.
Those bragging rights are likely to come at a price in the not-too-distant future.
Texas Parks and Wildlife moved closer to levying an annual fee on the highly popular program after the department’s commission granted permission at a November work session for proposed changes to be published in the Texas Register.
The proposals will be subject to public comment and could be approved by the commission in early 2020. TPWD officials hope to implement the fee for the 202122 hunting season, which would be ample time to update the Land Management Assistance website and for participants to prepare for the changes.
MLDP participation is currently free of charge, but the revenue from a future fee would be used to bolster the staff of biologists administering a program that has experienced immense growth.
Senate Bill 733, signed into law by the governor in June, gave the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission the authority to establish a fee for the MLDP. The recent work session discussion outlined the potential framework for those fees.
That fee structure corresponds with the MLDP option in which properties are enrolled: harvest or conservation. Most participants (83 percent) are enrolled in the conservation option.
The proposed fee under the conservation option per management unit, or individual ranch, is $300.
For properties with multiple management units, like large ranches with multiple low-fence and high-fence pastures, the charge will be $300 for the first unit and $30 for each additional unit.
Aggregate acreages are neighboring low-fenced properties that have multiple owners and are joined together for the purpose of MLDP enrollment. Aggregate acreages are viewed as a single property under MLDP and would be charged $300.
The conservation option also includes 109 wildlife management cooperatives. For co-ops, the proposed fee is $30 per management unit. Most of these co-ops exist in the eastern part of the state where doe harvest can be limited under county regulations, and most participants receive less than five antlerless MLDP tags.
The conservation option provides one-on-one, customized assistance from TPWD staff. Harvest recommendations are site-specific and often result in a more liberal bag limit. Participants are required to have a wildlife management plan, conduct deer population surveys and implement habitat management practices on enrolled properties.
The option also allows more opportunities for early buck harvest with a firearm. The current MLDP season stretches from Sept. 28Feb. 29, more than two months longer than Texas’ general white-tailed deer season. Under the conservation option, hunters can shoot a buck with branched antlers with a rifle throughout the MLDP season.
Hunters had to wait until Nov. 1 to use a rifle for branch-antlered bucks under the harvest option, which accounts for the other 17 percent of MLDP participation.
Those who participate in the harvest option would have to pay $30 per management unit under the proposed fee structure. A $30 fee would apply to aggregate acreages, too.
The harvest option is the self-service choice for landowners. Tag issuances are automated and aren’t sitespecific. The selection provides the benefits of a longer season and a few extra tags but does not require the wildlife management plan and practices of the conservation option.
The proposed fees will aim to increase the number of biologists that manage the highly successful program, one that has bridged management efforts between Texas’ private land owners and TPWD and has been a model for other wildlife agencies around the country.
MLDP has seen a tenfold growth since it began in 1996. Currently, there are 12,011 management units enrolled across 28,476,913 acres. Of those management units, 10,016 are in the conservation option, which has spread thin the approximately 80 biologists administering the program across the state.
Those biologists have plenty of other duties that require their efforts as well.
“They’re also responsible for Chronic Wasting Disease sampling, for age and antler data collection, all the regulatory surveys … a bunch of other things. So, they’ve got a lot on their plate,” said Alan Cain, TPWD’s whitetailed deer program leader.
Cain said the last time there was an increase in that group of biologists was when he was hired with a group of 10 in 2000.
“That combination of the program growth and not hiring any new biologists to address that MLD growth has presented significant challenges to the wildlife division,” Cain said.
One of those challenges is a struggle to meet the needs of a program that has skyrocketed over the last 20plus years. Cain says he has a colleague in South Texas who works with nearly 300 landowners.
“He’s lucky if he sees them every five to seven years. We want to be able to provide a much higher level of service, visit with those folks more frequently,” Cain said.
TPWD officials hope to add around 12-15 biologists with the revenue from the proposed fee structure. $1.8 million is the estimated revenue in the first year without attrition.
Those new biologists would have a significant impact as TPWD attempts to catch up with MLDP’s booming success.
The fee structure was presented before the commission after it was examined by numerous advisory committees and stakeholder groups. TPWD staff also described why alternative methods such as fees based on acreage or tags were not considered the best option. Fees based on tags could cause conflict over harvest recommendations between landowners and biologists, and fees based on tags or acreages do not reflect staff effort or the benefits received from the program. A more complicated graduated fee structure was also determined to result in unfair costs. Especially for co-ops, which have various numbers of members and acreages.
Along with the fee structure proposal, the department also aims to make the deadlines for fee remittance and withdrawal from the program the same day as the deadline for fee payment, the Friday closest to the opening day of the MLDP season.
The proposed changes are set to be published in the Dec. 6 issue of the Texas Register and will be available for public comment on the Texas Parks and Wildlife website.