Commissioner unsure ‘how much longer Fish and Game can go on’ without sustainable funding

An average of 189 in-person rescues happen in the state each year. (New Hampshire Fish and Game)

New Hampshire Fish and Game gets only a tiny sliver of its revenue from the state general fund. But as its responsibilities and costs grow, legislators are being told that needs to change for the department to survive.

“I don’t know how much longer Fish and Game can go on unless we get sustainable funding,” Ray Green, chair of the Fish and Game Commission, said Thursday.

How to address Fish and Game’s financial woes will be a central question of the legislative study committee that began its work in earnest on Thursday at the State House, appointing Sen. David Watters, a Dover Democrat, as its chair.

The group of four lawmakers must submit a report to top state officials by November detailing its findings and recommendations related to the department’s funding and partnerships. The committee was created through House Bill 542 , approved by Gov. Chris Sununu in July.

Its other members are Reps. James Spillane, a Deerfield Republican; Will Darby, a Nashua Democrat; and Daniel Popovici-Muller, a Windham Republican.

At the center of its problems, “Fish and Game is being asked to do more and more and more, but with no funding,” Green told the committee. The 11-member Fish and Game Commission, appointed by the governor and the Executive Council, oversees the department.

Though its responsibilities have grown beyond its original charter of hunters and anglers, only 2 percent of the department’s revenue in the 2023 fiscal year came from the general fund, according to a Fish and Game biennial report .

License fees, federal funds, and off-highway recreational vehicles, or OHRVs, together made up 71 percent of the department’s revenues in the 2023 fiscal year, the report said, with the fees making up a quarter of that. The remaining revenue sources were each single-digit percentages, including the small amount of general funds. The total came to over $35.5 million.

The department is in a precarious position, staring down close to a $2 million deficit in the coming year, Green said. The commission feels the only way to achieve “sustainable financing” for Fish and Game is by getting the money from the general fund, he said. He suggested that chunk could be about 15 to 20 percent of the department’s budget.

“I know there’s going to be a lot of people that are probably unhappy about this,” he told the committee. He listed a number of funding challenges for the department.

One is that hunting license sales have declined across the country, and the department is limited in its ability to make up that revenue. It charges similar fees as Vermont and Maine, and it can’t raise them to make up lost revenue without driving away potential in- and out-of-state hunters, Green said.

Lawmakers have also meddled with this revenue source.

“The Legislature, over the years, has also chosen to give free and reduced license fees,” Green said, “but they never come up with a way of when these fees get reduced, how are we replacing them?”

Employee pay-raises, rising health costs, and inflation have also put financial strains on the department, Green said.

And while these costs have grown, the department has also been asked to take on more and more responsibilities over the years, he said. It answers nuisance animal calls, has taken on rabies in the state, and performs costly and laborious search-and-rescues.

“It is a challenge to be funded in a way that assumes you do a specific job, and then have the job description change without the funding also (changing),” Popovici-Muller acknowledged.

Fish and Game does about 180 search-and-rescue missions a year, said Col. Kevin Jordan, the department’s law enforcement chief, costing an annual total of about $300,000 to $400,000. Besides the cost in dollars, his team pays a price.

“It beats up my officers badly,” Jordan said.

National Guard hopes to join Fish and Game on search and rescue missions

That’s exacerbated, he said, by the size of the force. He has 50 officers, which he said is fewer than the city of Concord’s police department, he said, even though his team covers the entire state.

In describing his encounters with the general public, Jordan said many residents believe the department is taxpayer funded.

“We hear it all the time, ‘My tax dollars hard at work,’” he told the committee. “And I correct them – this is not your tax dollars, not much of it, anyway.”

The next meeting of the study committee is tentatively scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 12.

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