Bill would take aim at Colorado DOW coffers

Bill would take aim at DOW coffers
By Charlie Meyers
The Denver PostPosted: 01/28/2009 12:30:00 AM MST

Let's start our discussion of the proposed legislation that would drain millions of dollars in sportsman's license money with one simple fact: Colorado's existing laws providing payments to landowners for damage caused by game animals is the most liberal, the most generous in the entire nation.

According to figures released by the Colorado Division of Wildlife, the agency paid nearly $1 million for game damage in fiscal year 2008, representing 391 separate claims.

In addition, the agency provides temporary game damage prevention materials free to landowners who ask for them, an outlay of more than $630,000 during that most recent fiscal year and more than double the previous high in 2007. The agency spends another $2.5 million on a habitat protection partnership that involves both habitat and preventive game damage projects.

Bottom line: Colorado spends considerably more on game damage than any of the 10 states with similar arrangements; 40 states have no provision for damage payments at all.

So why is the agricultural community pushing SB09-024, a measure that potentially would cost DOW and the sportsmen who foot the bills a far greater amount?

The bill has been temporarily tabled pending a meeting between agricultural and wildlife interests, possibly later this week. But the probability exists that it will re-emerge in some form, with the same very large question attached.

One answer lies in a cruel 2007-08 winter that killed thousands of big- game animals across the state and put a strain on the process by which DOW responds to trouble caused by deer and elk during these seasons of severe stress.

Haystack conflicts were the worst in a quarter-century, creating an all-hands-on-deck situation that found DOW frantically shuttling personnel and materials back and forth across the state. Some ranchers understandably came away distraught over events that put such a burden on their resources.

But it also can be argued that DOW did what it could under such trying circumstances and later paid for what it could not.

Which brings us to what may be the real motive behind a bill which proposes an astronomical raise in the amount a landowner can charge a hunter for access and still file a damage claim. At present, that amount is $100; the bill proposes to hike that to $2,500.

The kicker here is that it then would become almost impossible for DOW to monitor such payments, unless ranchers agreed to open their books — a reasonable requirement.

Angry sportsmen call this another example of landowner greed in overloading a system that already allows them 15 percent of all limited licenses set aside in transferable vouchers that can be sold for any amount they choose.

This legislative action also comes at a time when the DOW budget has taken a $4 million hit from lagging revenues while expenditures continue to rise.

It also points up the problems of a system in which all wildlife affairs are introduced through the Agriculture and Natural Resource Committee, an arrangement that gives agricultural interests a whip hand in both arms of the Colorado legislature — where committee chairmen repeatedly exhibit open hostility for wildlife interests.

Again, sportsmen have suggested that a separate wildlife committee be re-established to handle matters pertaining to wildlife and outdoor recreation. Such an arrangement existed until the early 1970s when, at the behest of ranchers, the