Is DOGE Inspiring Threats to the Texas Outdoors?

 

 

A MEMBER OF THE TEXAS STATE LEGISLATURE recently took out his frustrations with the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department by introducing a bill to abolish the department.  

Perhaps inspired by the rapid-fire budget slashing and wholesale agency shutdowns that the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been conducting in Washington, a bill was filed on March 13 seeking to shut Parks & Wildlife down and divvy up its assets and responsibilities to three other separate departments.

According to the Houston Chronicle, the legislation may have been motivated by a longstanding beef this representative has had with the department over its treatment of the state’s deer breeders, and in particular its response to Chronic Wasting Disease.   

Fortunately for those of us who live and work in what is, without argument, the richest outdoors environment in the country, the bill has apparently been tabled. Push-back was swift and intense. And it came from every corner of the outdoors enthusiast community—hunters, anglers, boaters, conservationists, nature lovers, environmentalists.  

Although this legislative attack on Texas outdoors sports may have been averted, we now have to add another potential threat to the growing list of hazards endangering the outdoors way of life. Anti-hunting activists, animal rights organizations, loss of habitat to the forces of nature and to human progress… and now the potential threat of irreparable damage from our own state leaders.

House Bill 4938 probably never would have made it to the governor’s desk, but it’s scary to think of the chaos it would have unleashed if it had. And now that this first punch has been thrown, what’s to stop another attack from a different direction—the commercial fishing lobby, or some band of well-heeled barstool biologists who think they know more about viral transmission statistics than researchers with decades of experience, and who might have the ear (or pockets) of a sympathetic legislator? 

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Texas Parks & Wildlife, like any governing body—federal, state, county, municipal, neighborhood HOA—certainly has its flaws and we’ve been critical of many of their actions. But we’re also absolutely certain that without their stewardship of the state’s outdoor resources, Texans would not have anywhere near the wealth of fresh and saltwater fishing opportunities, nor the abundance of game species for hunting—in a state with less than 5% publicly managed land—that TPWD has given us.

Just consider the scope of what Parks & Wildlife manages:

• 88 parks, natural areas and historical sites;

• Licensing and regulation of all fresh and saltwater fishing and hunting;

• All recreational boat licensing and registration, boating safety and education; 

• 50 Wildlife Management Areas covering a quarter-million acres in every ecological region of the state; 

• Conservation of the vast diversity of habitat across the Texas range, from coastal marshes to high plains desert;

• Fisheries management that has built and maintained thriving populations of fresh and saltwater species from Florida-strain largemouth and striped bass to red drum and spotted sea trout;

• Law enforcement embodied in a force of game wardens empowered with jurisdictional authority on par with Texas Rangers, who not only enforce game laws and stop poaching, but are sworn to enforce all state laws. 

Many more functions and management responsibilities fall under the department’s command.  Above is only a top-of-mind description of a fully mature organization that has been fulfilling a broad set of missions for three quarters of a century, since its conversion from the Texas Game, Fish and Oyster Commission into its modern incarnation and re-christening as the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department.  

Understand this—if TPWD goes down, fishing and hunting in Texas will suffer, no matter how its functions are peeled off and redistributed to other departments  

It could have made sense to break such a large portfolio of critical missions into two or three different departments. But to completely shut down an agency with a pretty damn solid track record and saddle other existing departments—that already have their own challenges in a rapidly growing state—with huge new responsibilities is a recipe for Epic Disaster.

Whether House Bill 4938 was just DOGE inspired political theater, or simply an expression of personal frustration from a disgruntled legislator, we need to take it seriously. Because next time it might be a real threat to break the agency we count on to protect our outdoors resources.

There is a thirst for government blood these days. God knows, every organization—whether it’s a bloated federal or state agency, or even a small two-man partnership—can always stand a healthy round of cost-cutting.

But to take a chainsaw to a department as vital to Texas anglers and hunters as TPWD is not healthy. It’s just plain stupid.  

 

E-mail Roy at rneves@fishgame.com and Ardia at aneves@fishgame.com