Penn State's view of PGC deer management.

[fabsroman]

Originally Posted by Adam Helmer

kt,

The Pennsylvania Game Commission MAY be hiding Gas Lease ASSETS! The PGC sits on 1.5 million acres of land in 265 tracts throughout PA. PGC states, "We do not own the oil, gas and mineral rights for ALL game land acreage." Correct, PGC does not own ALL OGM rights, BUT PGC has about 40-60% OGM ownership and the gas lease money apparently is NOT making its way into the Game Fund.

An employee has stated the PGC is "stashing" (hiding) gas lease money in CDs while it continues to cry the "poor mouth" and demand a hunting license increase. DCNR has about double the acreage of PGC and has reciueved 14 million in gas leases. How much will PGC own up to?

If you owned 1.5 million pristine acres of valuable hardwood, coal and gas today in PA you would be a multi-millionaire. PGC owns that 1.5 million acres, so why is there no REPORTABLE return on all that land?

Adam

I seriously doubt that they could hide the money from the gas income. It might very well be that the State of Pennsylvania owns the land and is using that income in the general fund. You need to read up on the laws and see how the PGC is funded. In Maryland, it pretty much states how license fees are supposed to be used. Plus, the legislature sets the operating budget of DNR.

Unless the PGC is a separate and private entity from the State of Pennsylvania, I seriously doubt it has much control over how much money it gets. If anything, you should look into this too. If your state is not providing your game commission with adequate funds to protect the game resources, then you need to fix that too. For instance, you can pass as many laws as you want to protect the deer herd, but if there are no game wardens to enforce the laws you might as well forget about it.