The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

trjbune marcb 2989 c7 fishing licence fr a by art briggsjude while the ontario resident sport fishing licence is viewed as an in convenient government tax by some people there is no doubt its introduction a year ago has given our fresh water fishery a much needed boost apart from the 9 million annual revenue that will be pumped back into the resource this user pay concept has created an added awareness amongst the fishing public of the problems and conditions affecting the sporting activity they so dearly enjoy in the past the yearly costs of the ministry of natural re sources fishing programs were part of this provinces annual budget as such any allotment to sport fishing was dependent not only on priorities within their ministry but on any number of demands in the many other branches of the provincial government thus if it was a particuarly hazardous fire year a large por tion of the natural resources budget was used to finance the ex tra costs involved in fighting fires consequently other programs and plans such as fish studies ex panded stocking spawning re habilitation and la w enforcement were scaled down accordingly similarly the outbreak of forest pests such as the recent gypsy moth plague dictated the minis trys priorities in that regard the alltime high water levels recorded in 1986 on the great lakes is another example of how the provincial pie was cut this emergency situation ne cessitated nearly 2 million in mnr funds to be allocated for flood and erosion control includ ing the issuance of a million bags of sand to help rotect residential property locked into an ontario budget that included even highway con struction expenditures the minis try of natural resources was open for mounting criticism yet while mnrs fisheries he was this big don greenslades poses with the 12 pound 9 ounce walleye he caught in rideau lake recently introduced fishing licences help improve sport fishing in ontario although many feel theyre just another form of government tax the benefit is that the licence fees go directly to the fisheries branch to pay for fishing improvements in other years the ministry of natural resources had to rely solely on a portion of provin cial funds which was often inadequate art briggsjude branch was hard at it trying to come up with solutions to main tain the sport fishery in some areas the problems were being compounded in other ways deteriorating water quality added fishing pressure acid rain and the loss of nursery habitat due to shoreline development on many waterways were very real factors they affected not only fresh wa ter fish productivity but the man agement of the resources as well relying on past studies back ground information and public input each mnr district in ontario is now preparing a de tailed fisheries management plan the identification of the long- term fisheries goals and the short term actions needed to achieve the desired results will be used as a fisheries directive until the year 2000 in addition the mnr has an ongoing program of assessment of fish populations and spent 51- million on new fish culture facili ties in 19867 an additional 450000 for com munity fishery involvement pro jects was also alloted by the ministry during the same period its quite possible these pro jects and others including put ting additional law enforcement offiers in the field would have come about at some point in time even without the resident fishing licence however i believe that by laying our 10 bucks on the line we are staking our rightful claim not only as participants but also ste wards of this magnificient past- time called fishing our annual vested interest is a constant moni tor to a sport that can only get better