Dr. Doug Austen

Fish and Boat Commission Executive Director Dr. Douglas Austen provided the House Game and Fisheries Committee with its annual report on February 14.

“The past several years have brought us two opening days of trout season that addresses both the climatic differences in the state as well as the challenges with our kids of busy spring weekends of soccer and baseball,” said Dr. Austen. “Through listening to our public we stock larger trout. We now have an electronic licensing system and we are implementing state-of-the-art effluent filtration in our hatcheries.

“We have also seen the emergence of an active fishing access program, a boat access grant program with nearly 50 projects either completed or in progress, a reconfigured musky program, greatly expanded emphasis on habitat, and innovative marketing strategies.

“We look to expand our understanding of the resources through a new emphasis on rivers with the Three Rivers Ecological Research Center in Pittsburgh and new staff forthcoming on the Susquehanna and Delaware Rivers.

“We have a new agency organization that will move us forward with creative ideas and a management structure designed to facilitate getting things done. We are continually looking to ensure efficiencies, conserve, enhance and protect resources, and address the needs of the angling and boating publics of the Commonwealth.”

The finances of the Commission are healthy, but Dr. Austen cautioned the impact of the recent license increase is being eroded by increased fuel, health care and other costs and by 2012-13 funding balances will be at critically low levels. The Commission did see a 1.5 percent increase in the number of fishing licenses bought last year and 2.4 percent in 2006.

Dr. Austen also promoted the idea of a youth fishing license to not only get more youth involved in fishing, but to provide the resources to expand youth-oriented fishing education and involvement programs. House Bill 1436 (Gergely-D-Allegheny) would authorize the new license.

He pointed to examples in Eire and West Chester where small grants for youth programs were successful in getting hundreds of students involved in fishing.

A copy of Dr. Austen’s annual report is available online.

2/29/2008