Let’s get this straight up front: The New Mexico Department of Game and Fish needs more money.
The game department receives no general fund support. It depends on hunting and fishing license revenues and on federal grants for operations. It currently takes in approximately $47 million a year.
Inflation has eroded each license dollar’s value by 47 percent since the last meaningful license fee adjustment took effect in 2006. Eighteen years will have passed before any new fees go into effect with the next license year, April 1, 2024.
Senate Bill 254, introduced last week by Sen. Steven Neville, R-Aztec, and Sen. Pete Campos, D-Las Vegas, would raise license fees to bring the department an additional $9 million in annual revenue.
The New Mexico Wildlife Federation supports SB 254 because the federation recognizes the need to fund the game department fully. That said, the NMWF has real concerns about how the game department got into this position and the federation sees the need for concrete change going forward to protect the interests of New Mexico residents.
Over the past year, the New Mexico State Game Commission and the game department brass banked on Congress passing the “Restoring America’s Wildlife Act” – a measure which would have brought the NMDGF an additional $27 million a year in federal funds, requiring a $9-million state match. Our state’s top game managers were caught flat-footed when the bill died in December, in the last few days of the last Congress.
Now, unless the Legislature agrees to hike license fees, or comes up with some other source of funding, the game commission will be forced to freeze hiring, reduce wildlife management activities such as big game surveys, limit travel by game wardens, biologists and other staff, cut contractual services, and reduce maintenance on game department buildings. It has already put a hold on some capital improvement projects, such as fish barriers critical to restoring Rio Grande cutthroat trout. In short, our wildlife will suffer.
As introduced, SB 254 would bail out the game department. But going forward, the NMWF fears that if the bill’s not refined to offer more protection to the interests of state residents, it would also reinforce some of the glaring inequities in how New Mexico currently allocates elk licenses and other public resources.
The cost of both resident and nonresident tags would increase under the bill. For example, resident fishing would go from $25 to $35; resident deer from $31 to $50; cow elk from $50 to $60; and resident either-sex elk from $80 to $90. Nonresident fishing would rise from $56 to $90; nonresident deer from $260 to $375; either-sex elk from $525 to $750 and quality elk from $750 to $975.
It’s no secret that states around the West charge nonresidents more for high-demand hunting licenses, such as those for bull elk, than they charge their own residents. But while other states – including neighboring Arizona – limit nonresidents to just 10 percent of the licenses for elk and other big game species, New Mexico inexplicably offers its residents no such protection.
The NMWF and the New Mexico Chapter of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers recently released a detailed report titled “Take Back Your Elk” that detailed how the state gives an outsized share of public elk licenses to private landowners through its “Elk Private Land Use System” (EPLUS).
In addition to the EPLUS system, New Mexico also dedicates 10 percent of the licenses in the public draw to those hunters who retain an outfitter. The “Take Back Your Elk” report documented that those “outfitter set-aside” tags also overwhelmingly go to nonresidents.
The conservation groups had to fight hard to get the NMDGF to release the records showing our state’s unfair distribution of elk licenses. Those records show that overall, nonresident hunters received over 35 percent of the total elk licenses issued by the state in 2021.
The Legislature’s own nonpartisan Legislative Finance Committee issued a report two years ago noting that the game department benefits from EPLUS – but only at the expense of resident hunters.
“The high utilization of EPLUS by nonresidents is financially beneficial to the department because they pay significantly higher license fees, but that same private system likely creates opportunity for wealthier, out-of-state hunters at the expense of New Mexico residents,” the LFC audit stated.
At first glance, SB 254’s proposed license fee increase may appear to be a pretty good deal for New Mexico hunters and anglers. Again, this would mark the first increase in 18 years, and nonresidents would pay higher increases.
But although it initially may sound appealing to New Mexicans to saddle nonresidents with the bulk of new costs, in fact there are real drawbacks to relying ever more heavily on nonresident license dollars. The more our game department comes to rely on nonresident license fees, the harder it’s going to be for New Mexico resident hunters to reform the unfair EPLUS system and other abuses in the future.
Despite intense lobbying by the NMWF over the past year, the game commission refused to discuss any possible changes to EPLUS. Now, as the game department looks to New Mexicans to support its bailout plan, it’s time for us to demand reform of our license allocation system.
Rather than funding the game department by increasing the fee for nonresidents to buy New Mexico big game draw hunting licenses, the NMWF suggests New Mexico lawmakers look hard at increasing the fee for nonresidents to purchase their “game hunting license.”
As introduced, SB 254, calls for hiking the fee for “nonresident game hunting license” from its current $65 up to only $85. All nonresidents have to purchase this nonrefundable license – which allows them to hunt game birds and small game in our state – as a prerequisite for applying for elk and other high-demand tags in our state’s public draw.
Lawmakers should consider hiking the “nonresident game hunting license” fee to, say, $160, the same fee Arizona charges to nonresidents for that license, rather than hiking actual nonresident big game, draw license fees so much.
Again, every nonresident seeking a license to hunt in our state has to buy the “game hunting license” whether they subsequently draw a big game tag in the lottery or not. Getting them to pay more at the application stage would remove the game department’s incentive to make up revenue shortfalls by shipping excess numbers of licenses to hunt our elk out of state.
SB 254 has a provision that would specify that residents or family members of residents who participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and who make arrangements first with the game department would qualify for a 25-percent discount on all fees. The bill currently is pending before the Senate Conservation Committee.
While the sentiment of helping needy New Mexicans with the cost of hunting licenses is commendable, the NMWF sees the need for state lawmakers to undertake even greater reforms. Doing away with the outfitter set-aside entirely and reducing the number of tags going into the EPLUS system would put more tags in the public draw and do far more to help all New Mexico residents put food on the table than giving a few state residents a discount.
All of these concerns point to one central issue: the game commission has failed for years in meeting its real fiduciary responsibility to manage our state’s wildlife for the group of people to whom it belongs – the New Mexico public. While it may seem expedient to sell our hunting opportunities to the highest bidder by accepting ever-increasing amounts of nonresident license fee money, New Mexico hunters ask their state lawmakers to keep their eyes on the real prize: insisting on more equitable allocation of hunting licenses for New Mexico residents.
Yes, increasing license fees is overdue. But state lawmakers should also insist going forward that the game commission itself release an annual report showing how many tags go into the EPLUS system and how much those tags sell for. Lawmakers should demand a detailed accounting of how much the game department pays to administer the EPLUS system. That information should be compiled and published annually in the department’s “Rules and Information” booklet. As well, details should be published annually regarding the resident/nonresident distribution of deer, pronghorn and oryx licenses.
With a constant reminder that nonresident license fee revenue generated through the sale of limited draw tags comes at a real cost to resident hunters in lost opportunities, the NMWF believes public opinion will continue to turn in favor of sweeping reform of our broken license-distribution system.