Durkin: Gov. Scott Walker fails to deliver on campaign promises to sportsmen

Patrick Durkin | For USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

Eight years have passed since we saw our first “Sportsmen for Walker” yard signs, and read “Scott’s Plan” to appoint a “Whitetail Deer Trustee … to revise our deer counting system.”

In case you’ve forgotten 2010, “Scott’s Plan” also promised to take “the politics out of the woods and put the deer back in,” and declared that deer management must be “based on objective science and the best interests of the taxpayers and license buyers.”

The future governor even told campaign crowds, “Like most sportsmen, I’m tired of sitting in a deer stand all day and not seeing any deer.”

Sigh. If Walker regularly endures all-day sits during late November’s gun season, why did he never register a deer from 2007 through 2017? He’s been licensed to do so those years, according to Wisconsin’s automated licensing system.

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Here’s why: Walker doesn’t know a .30-06 from a .30-30 cartridge, a Rage from a Muzzy broadhead, or a spinning reel from a baitcaster. Even so, he enthusiastically politicizes hunting and fishing to seek support from hunters, anglers, trappers and other conservationists.

In return, he hip-checks them from his treestand. Consider these 21 examples, which weren’t outlined in Scott’s Plan:

In 2011, Gov. Walker signed Act 21, which revamped administrative rule-making for state agencies. The act curtailed the Wisconsin Conservation Congress’ citizen-based advisory role to the seven-citizen Natural Resources Board, which sets DNR policy. Those rule-making powers now reside with the governor.

In 2011, Walker signed legislation ending “earn-a-buck” regulations, which required hunters to shoot a doe or fawn before shooting a buck. The only alternative for reducing deer herds is antlerless-only hunts, which no county has imposed.

After contracting Texas biologist James Kroll as the state’s “deer czar” in 2012, Walker entrusted DNR secretary Cathy Stepp to work with 50 citizen-volunteers in four committees to craft “action plans” for Kroll’s 80-plus recommendations. Walker then sat silent in 2013 when Stepp and DNR Board member Greg Kazmierski largely ignored the citizens’ efforts, and wrote their own plan. Their hodgepodge of regulations provides no regional coordination between the state’s 72 counties, no “tools” for reducing herds when needed, and no systematic testing program for monitoring chronic wasting disease.

Walker never urges hunters to get their deer tested for CWD, and his administration has slashed CWD funding. The DNR’s CWD budget averaged $1.14 million annually from 2012 through 2018, basically half of its $2.21 million average from 2008 through 2011, and a quarter of its $4.8 million average from 2004 through 2007. Meanwhile, CWD is worsening in southern Wisconsin’s endemic region. In 2010, the DNR found 219 CWD cases in 7,097 deer tested in the agency’s Southern farmlands region, a 3 percent infection rate. In 2017, the DNR found 558 CWD cases in 5,545 tests in that region, a 10.6 percent rate.

Walker sat quiet in 2011-12 as Stepp and Kazmierski eliminated October antlerless-only firearms hunts to control deer herds. They also ended buck hunting during southern Wisconsin’s late-December gun season, even though male deer are more likely to carry CWD.

During his first term, Walker let Stepp kill regular participation by UW-Madison researchers, retired DNR biologists and active DNR biologists in citizen advisory committees on fish and wildlife management.

In 2015, Walker helped eliminate the DNR’s 60-person science services bureau, eventually paring its staff to 15 researchers, and reassigning them to fisheries, wildlife and wastewater management programs.

Walker vetoed language in the state’s 2015-17 budget to allow people to walk “directly across the tracks of any railroad.” The Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee had inserted that phrase into the budget so people could legally cross railroad tracks to reach public hunting and fishing areas.

In 2015, Walker ended taxpayer support for state parks. Subsequent cuts eliminated the parks’ ranger force. Attempts to fill that void with the DNR’s hunter-funded conservation wardens failed this year.

In 2015, Walker eroded the state’s historic public-trust doctrine governing waterways by signing legislation to open more shoreline development.

In 2016, Walker supported Stepp’s sale of 10,000 acres of publicly owned lands.

In December 2016, Walker stayed silent when Stepp’s DNR removed all mention of climate change from the agency’s website, even though the information was generated by agency and UW researchers.

In 2017, Walker signed legislation limiting bans on deer baiting and feeding to three years if a CWD-infected county doesn’t find additional CWD cases, or two years if an adjoining county doesn’t find more CWD cases. The law set no minimum testing requirements for CWD-affected counties. Walker ignored requests from the Conservation Congress to veto the bill.

In 2017, Walker signed legislation eliminating carcass tags for deer, turkeys and geese, even though the rule never received public notice or a hearing.

In 2017, Walker supported the Legislature and attorney general in deregulating high-capacity wells statewide, even though UW researchers tied unrestricted pumping to drying wetlands and waterways like Portage County’s Little Plover River and Waushara County’s Long Lake.

Walker encourages concentrated animal feeding operations, even where geology is ill-suited for large-scale agricultural waste. About 30 percent of private wells in Kewaunee and Portage counties recently exceeded health-based nitrate limits. As of six months ago, 75 Kewaunee County families were still using Algoma High School’s clean water kiosk for drinking water. Agricultural waste also has degraded trout streams in those counties.

In 2017, Walker’s administration tried killing the DNR’s bimonthly Natural Resources magazine, but compromised by reducing the popular publication to a quarterly frequency.

In 2017, Walker supported slashing the DNR’s outdoor education programs, and drastically curtailing the agency’s seven-decade presence at the state fair.

Walker twice has signed legislation relaxing wetland rules, and eliminated wetland regulations for building the Foxconn Technology Group’s complex in Sturtevant.

In 2017, Walker eliminated the state’s century-old forestry mill tax, which ensured funding for long-term forest management by private landowners.

Since 2017, Walkers has tacitly supported Stepp and her successor, Dan Meyer, in forbidding DNR staff from testifying at public hearings unless invited to speak by a bill’s author or the hearing’s presiding chair.

With a record like that, Gov. Walker will need an especially clever plan if he hopes to enter Wisconsin’s Conservation Hall of Fame at Stevens Point.

Patrick Durkin is a freelance writer who covers outdoors for USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin. Email him at patrickdurkin56@gmail.com.