The grades are in, and the Pennsylvania Game Commission is doing well in some areas, not so well in others.
That’s the conclusion drawn by the state’s Legislative Budget and Finance Committee.
That group is required by law to examine the commission’s strategic plan every three years and render opinions on where the commission is succeeding, where it’s failing and where there’s room for improvement. It’s latest look at the commission and its plan was unveiled last week.
And?
Well, the commission got high marks for deer management. In a presentation to lawmakers, committee chairman Phil Durgin said that between 2009 and 2014 – the time period covered by the plan in review – the commission “fully or largely achieved” its deer management goals.
The commission’s deer goal was to stabilize populations in 20 wildlife management units, decrease it in two and increase it in one.
“Actual population trends match the (commission’s) objective in all but seven WMUs, so we considered this objective to have been at least largely achieved,” Durgin said.
That didn’t necessarily lead to substantially better habitat, though, and that led the committee to give the commission poorer marks. Durgin said that habitat conditions appear to have changed little in the past eight years on a landscape scale.
Just one wildlife management units rated “good” using commission goals, with 70 percent or more of forested plots having adequate regeneration, Durgin said in his report. Another 15, with 50-70 percent of plots regenerating, were rated as fair, while four, with less than 50 percent regeneration, rated as poor.
“These figures match the eight-year average for the period 2007-2014, so it is difficult to see that there has been any significant improvement over the period,” Durgin said.
It was harder to draw any definitive conclusions about hunter recruitment and retention goals, Durgin added.
It’s true that license sales increased from 2008-09 to 2013-14, he said. But the growth equaled just 1 percent.
The commission has made more recent strides, though, he added. In 2009 it put 30,213 students through a hunter education course. In 2014 it reached a record 41,462.
Currently, the Game Commission is developing a new plan for 2015-2020. It can be seen by looking under the “about us” tab here.
