BRETT FRENCH | bfrench@billingsgazette.com
A bill that would increase funding for the state’s popular Block Management hunter access program — which pays landowners to allow public hunting — got a tepid response from lawmakers on Thursday.
House Bill 145, sponsored by Rep. Gary Parry, R-Colstrip, would raise the base license fee for nonresidents from $15 to $100 with $90 going to fund Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks hunting access programs.
“Hopefully we can compete with some of the folks that are coming in and buying the land up,” Parry said in introducing the bill to the House Fish, Wildlife and Parks Committee.
In 2023, nonresidents bought 85,228 base hunting licenses, up from 58,254 in 2019 (an increase of almost 27,000). If they had paid $100 for the licenses, with $90 going to the Block Management hunter access program, more than $7.67 million would have been raised.
Pros and cons
Steve Christian, who owns homes in Colstrip and Medicine Lake, was the lone proponent of the fee increase.
“Over the years, I have seen a greater influx of the nonresident hunters coming in and utilizing the block management lands,” Christian said, putting increased pressure on what has become a dwindling amount of property.
Speaking in opposition to the fee increase was Scott Boulanger, representing the Montana Outfitters and Guides Association. His group would support a “mild increase,” Boulanger said, but was opposed to the jump to $100.
Committee vice-chair Caleb Hinkle, R-Belgrade, compared $100 to “pocket lint” when it comes to the other expenses nonresidents are paying to hunt in Montana.
“How is 100 bucks drastic?” he asked Boulanger.
Boulanger said the increase from $15 to $100 was drastic.
An amendment, alluded to by one of the committee members, dropping the fee to $50, with $40 going to Block Management, had not yet been attached to the bill online. If that were approved, based on 2023 nonresident base license numbers, only $3.4 million would have been raised.
“If it is too much they can stay in their own states,” Parry said. “I think we need to look out for the people of Montana, and I think this bill pushes that forward and, hopefully, gets us more access for the people in this state.”
Rep. Shannon Maness, R-Dillon, noted FWP has already increased fees for Block Management cooperators and questioned whether more money would improve enrollment in the program.
Maness directed the question to FWP’s Quentin Kujala, chief of Conservation Policy, who said staff had told him the reason for fewer acres enrolled was because of ranchland sales.
Declines
Last year, more than 6.8 million acres of private land was enrolled in the Block Management Program, provided by 1,314 cooperators at a cost to the department of more than $12.28 million.
In comparison, in 2019 more than 1,200 landowners enrolled 7.1 million acres at a cost of more than $5.5 million in direct cash payments, plus another nearly $2 million a year in services, according to a 2020 Montana Outdoors article.
Between 2013 and 2023, enrollment by landowners in the Block Management Program has declined by about 10.5%, according to Emily Cooper, FWP’s Licensing Bureau chief. That’s equal to a loss of more than 891,400 acres.
In southeastern Montana’s Region 7 alone, 17% of the Block Management Program’s acreage has been lost, which is equal to about a half-million acres, she noted.
Yet hunter days have increased by 56% since 2013, so hunters are spending an estimated 230,900 more days in the field to find game.
At the same time, however, resident deer hunter numbers have declined by about 4,000 since 2014 and 2,700 fewer residents are hunting elk. Meanwhile, nonresident deer hunters have increased by more than 3,700 in the same time span and nonresident elk hunters have climbed by more than 3,100.
In this timeframe, FWP is also seeing a decline in hunter effort in northwest Montana’s Regions 1 and 2, whereas hunter numbers have climbed in Eastern Montana’s Regions 6 and 7, Cooper said.
