Hunting season starts with youth

Autumn brings with it not only cooler weather and football but the arrival of hunting season. As a lifelong hunter and the father and son of hunters, I gladly welcome the season. It brings to mind one of my projects as a state senator of which I am most proud: Youth Hunting Days.

As state senator from District 36, I authored the legislation creating Youth Hunting Days. My idea was to encourage youngsters to hunt in our state, in order to continue and expand on Louisiana’s time-honored role as the Sportsmen’s Paradise. The law allows young Louisiana residents to hunt squirrel, duck, turkey, deer and other game one week before regular hunting season opens, and that way have a better chance at success.

Since it began more than 20 years ago, Youth Hunting Days has become a tradition for many Louisiana families. Parents and grandparents take their children and grandchildren hunting to enjoy the Great Outdoors, and the presence of the adults encourages safety. Youngsters from single-parent homes often are taken along by another adult who is a licensed hunter and knows the all-important safety rules.

The state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries uses Youth Hunting Days to recruit young hunters to the sport. The department’s goal is to help youngsters develop a lifelong enthusiasm for an outdoor recreation activity and thus provide lasting support for DWF’s management of fish and game resources.

Hunting and fishing are multi-billion-dollar contributors to Louisiana’s economy, and much of the support of this industry provided by the state comes in the form of fees paid by hunters and fishermen.

Another wildlife-related bill I authored as a senator was the 1995 act that created one of Louisiana’s first special license plates, the “Save the Louisiana Black Bear” plate. I was approached by wildlife supporters in New Orleans who had the idea, borrowed from Florida’s “Save the Manatee” campaign, to raise money for bear conservation by selling license plates with the Louisiana Black Bear image.

The Louisiana Black Bear’s  historical habitat of forested bottomland in Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas had for years been largely cleared and cultivated for agriculture, with notable exceptions in the Tensas and Atchafalaya river basins. As a result the bear’s population was reduced to a reported 300 animals by the early 1990s.

Louisiana now has scores of special license plates celebrating wildlife, schools, charitable causes and the like, but in the mid-1990s the concept was still new. Legislators were generally warm to the idea, with the exception of a few who voiced concerns about bear damage to crops.

Wildlife and Fisheries now claims the bear’s population has recovered to approximately 1,000 animals and its status as a federally designated “endangered” species should be changed to a less strict “threatened” status. There is even talk of a bear hunt.

The Louisiana Office of Motor Vehicles reports total sales of Black Bear plates exceeding 4,500 and nearly half a million dollars raised to promote bear conservation.

In 1997, I followed passage of the Black Bear plate with another special license plate celebrating  the Bobwhite Quail. My family has hunted quail for generations, and the decline of the species and its habitat in Louisiana has forced us to travel hundreds of miles from Louisiana to find this game bird.

My interest in wildlife and outdoors legislation actually began early in my senate career when I passed a bill called “Louisiana Acres for Wildlife.” It established a program within the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries to support rural landowners who wanted to manage their lands for wildlife habitat.

Now that I am out of the Legislature and serve on the Public Service Commission, my concerns are primarily about utility rates and service. Issues focused on the outdoors and conservation rarely come up at the PSC. Yet I maintain a keen interest in conservation. I do my best to acknowledge that how we use energy, water and other utilities all have a bearing on the environment.

I try to ensure that our decisions as regulators assist the utilities and their customers in making wise use of our natural resources.

Foster Campbell is the North Louisiana representative on the Louisiana Public Service Commission. You can reach him at 676-7464 or foster. campbell@la.gov.