By The Center for Michigan - August 3, 2007
A firearm deer license in Michigan is fifteen bucks a year. An all-species fishing license is twenty-eight bucks a year. Spend a long weekend on either of those outdoors hobbies and you're paying less than a dollar an hour. Michigan hasn't increased its outdoor license fees in eleven years. Yet in that time, state budget pressures have required the DNR to increasingly rely in on license fees to fund the department. The results. Less money on habitat protection. Fewer fish and wildlife counts. Layoffs and job openings left unfilled.
A general inability to take care of the "North Coast" natural resources that generate about $3 billion a year in economic activity in Michigan. Ten months ago, the DNR, in conjunction with many outdoors groups, issued a report pleading for fee increases (pdf). Example: the new fishing license would be forty bucks, less than the cost of a good fly line for a trout angler. The Legislature hasn't acted on the request.
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