After much uproar and angst, might the idea of creating a game lands user permit be dying a slow death?
It’s looking that way.
Pennsylvania Game Commissioners last summer first rolled out the idea of making hikers, mountain bikers, snowmobilers and horseback riders get a permit before using state game lands. The thought behind that, they said, was twofold: to make those people financially responsible for some of the maintenance needs associated with their use of the lands, and to make it possible to get them information about game lands rules and regulations.
Commissioners later removed hikers from the list of possible permitees, but the whole thing still generated a firestorm of controversy.
Creation of a free permit was scheduled to be on the commission’s agenda at its January meeting, in fact – so as to give people time to comment on it – but the board pulled it in the face of a massive outcry.
Now the idea is apparently inching closer to going away altogether.
Bill Capioullez, director of the agency’s bureau of habitat management, said commission staff met with representatives of a number of conservation and outdoors groups recently. The list included sportsmen’s groups like the Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs, Unified Sportsmen and United Bowhunters of Pennsylvania, conservancies, including the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, and others, like the Keystone Trails Association, Pennsylvania Equine Council, Sierra Club and others.
The goal was to figure out if a permit is needed, and where to go next, Capioullez said.
No recommendations came out of the meeting. It will be up to a smaller focus group to suggest either that the commission create a permit or try to handle the issues behind it internally, Capioullez said.
In the meantime, the good news is that the groups found “a lot of common ground,” he added. But there was also a surprising amount of confusion and misinformation, he said.
Many of the those present – most of them officers with their respective organizations – didn’t know game lands were different than other public lands in terms of ownership and intended uses, for example, he said. Many did not know that there were specific rules on where and when people could ride and hike either.
The meeting was a good vehicle for getting that information out, especially if those people take what they learned back to their groups, Capioullez said.
“Certainly the education piece, and the communication piece, is huge,” Capioullez said.
That’s always been the issue, said commissioner Brian Hoover of Delaware County. The commission has long known some of the people using its game lands don’t know the rules for them, he said. That was the intention of the permit, he said.
Now, whether it comes to be is the question.
“Finding the vehicle to get that information to them is going to be the interesting part,” Hoover said.
