Kansas lawmakers are at odds over a proposed law that might pinch duck and goose hunters coming from out of state. The proposal would restrict nonresident waterfowlers to looking simply three days per week on most public lands in Kansas. It might additionally elevate the value of migratory waterfowl habitat stamps for each residents and nonresidents.
Supporters of the proposal say that limiting nonresidents to looking on Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays will profit resident hunters and assist ease the strain on chook populations. They level to an imbalance of nonresidents in some public looking areas, together with what they are saying are modifications to migratory patterns which have resulted from all this strain.
The three-day-a-week restriction on nonresident hunters would apply to all public lands managed by the state and federal authorities, together with wildlife refuges. There are a number of exceptions, in accordance with the present textual content of the bill. It wouldn’t apply on designated walk-in properties or on navigable rivers inside the state. It additionally wouldn’t apply through the prolonged mild goose conservation season. The invoice doesn’t point out any restrictions on personal property.
This concept to restrict nonresident duck hunters has been mentioned in Kansas earlier than, and state lawmakers have been planning to work on an analogous proposal for subsequent yr’s legislative session. However one lawmaker was unwilling to attend, in accordance with KAKE News. Sen. Virgil Peck added the proposal to an present looking invoice, SB 213, final week. The invoice cleared the state Senate simply on Thursday, with only one member voting towards it, and it’s now primed for debate within the Home.
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“The explanation this laws handed this physique was to guard our in-state waterfowl hunters, to offer them extra alternatives to hunt among the higher locations,” Sen. Peck advised the native outlet Monday. “We have been additionally having an issue with a few of our migratory birds altering their flight patterns due to extreme looking in sure areas.”
Peck’s second level has been broadly mentioned in lots of waterfowling circles, however there isn’t sufficient proof at this level to show that looking strain alone is altering flight paths. There are too many different elements influencing migrations, experts say, together with climate circumstances from yr to yr and large-scale modifications to breeding and nesting habitats.
A note accompanying the invoice does help Peck’s claims about out-of-staters overcrowding resident hunters, nonetheless. It exhibits that nonresidents accounted for roughly 40 % of all waterfowl hunters in Kansas through the 2020-21 season. (In comparison with a median of roughly 28 % in all of the years prior.) Though this was initially written off as a part of the “Covid Bump” that led to larger looking and fishing license gross sales in lots of states, figures from Kansas Division of Wildlife and Parks present even larger percentages of nonresident hunters through the years that adopted. That proportion has held regular at round 41.4 % during the last two seasons.
The 2020-21 season was additionally the primary time that out-of-state hunters outnumbered residents at Cheyenne Bottoms, in accordance with additional data from the KDWP. The enormous wetland in Central Kansas is a important stopping level within the Central Flyway and one of the vital standard duck-hunting locations within the Sunflower State.
KDWP migratory recreation chook program supervisor Tom Bidrowski spoke to the results of all this throughout a public meeting in April 2023. Bidrowski famous how elevated strain results in lowered entry and decrease high quality looking for Kansans.
“Sustaining resident Kansas waterfowl hunters is a excessive precedence,” Bidrowski mentioned throughout his presentation, in accordance with Wildfowl, “and Kansas can not preserve its waterfowl looking heritage with out robust resident waterfowlers.”
At the moment, the company was contemplating a regulation change that might have put related restrictions on nonresident waterfowlers. Along with limiting their looking days to Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, KDWP was different doable choices, together with boating restrictions and/or decreased bag limits for nonresidents. These modifications by no means occurred, nonetheless, which is why state legislators are taking over the problem.
And a few of these lawmakers are against the inclusion of non-resident looking restrictions in SB 213. A minimum of one state consultant complained individually in regards to the elevated prices that residents must pay for migratory waterfowl stamps. (Below the proposed regulation, resident stamps could be capped at $20, and nonresident stamps could be capped at $100. These stamps at the moment price hunters $10 no matter residency.) Their larger concern is that pinching out-of-staters will find yourself costing them conservation {dollars} and tourism cash in the long term.
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The proposal may have an outsized impact on waterfowl outfitters in Kansas, which frequently depend on out-of-state hunters to remain worthwhile. Limiting their shoppers to only a few days per week would hamstring duck and goose guides, who would in any other case choose their days in accordance with climate circumstances and chook numbers. It might additionally make issues tough for average-Joe hunters who journey to Kansas from Missouri or elsewhere to hunt the weekend however should be again at work on Monday morning.
“[That’s] fairly a little bit of income leaving our county, leaving our space, in the event that they’re not allowed to remain there Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and like some folks, prefer to hunt for the week,” Rep. Dale Helwig advised KAKE. “So for that purpose, only for the financial profit in my space, I’m against this invoice.”
Rep. Webster Roth sided with Helwig, in accordance with KAKE, and mentioned he’ll work to make modifications to the invoice because it faces scrutiny within the Home. It was referred to the Committee on Agriculture and Pure Sources Friday. Any modifications ensuing from the invoice’s passage would go into impact in 2026.
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