G&F to continue managing Pine Tree land

The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission will continue to manage hunting and fishing at the Pine Tree Research Station.

On Thursday, AG&F Commissioners agreed to a sixmonth contract, allowing time to develop a longer-term contract, Chris Colclasure, the commission's deputy director, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

The Pine Tree Research Station is owned by the University of Arkansas System's Division of Agriculture, which last year entered into a contract to sell 6,300 acres, about half the station’s total acreage, to a private entity, Lobo Farms LLC, for about $17.6 million. Both sides agreed in early June to cancel that deal after opposition from lawmakers and the public.

The agreement continues what the commission has been doing since 1999, when both parties signed a cooperative agreement for Game and Fish to manage 6,300 Pine Tree acres as a wildlife demonstration area. While that agreement was for five years, Game and Fish's management has continued since.

(Continued from Page 1) The land was open to the public for hunting, fishing and other outdoors activities for decades prior to the 1999 agreement.

The area managed by Game and Fish "is very popular for our hunting and fishing public over in the east part of the state," Colclasure told the commission in his presentation of the new contract. "If you're a citizen in Forrest City or Wynne or some of those communities over there, this is your place, this is where you go, this is your Bayou Meto or Hurricane Lake, this is it for them.”

Noting the proposed sale only in passing, Colclasure said Game and Fish had been "committed to working with" the UA Division of Agriculture throughout the process.

A Game and Fish Commission spokesman said last month it plans to issue 900 deer permits for the Pine Tree acreage this hunting season. That number was reduced to 225 last year when the Pine Tree sale was being considered.

The Division of Agriculture said it has shared some costs with Game and Fish in the joint venture of keeping the hunting and fishing grounds open to the public. Citing an example, the division said the two entities shared the $35,400 cost in 2016 of improving 1.3 miles of a gravel road to a reservoir and boat ramp.