AZ G&F Funding for Warm Water Fishery Mgmt

[Caljet]

Is Jason riding that turtle?

[Bayou]

How much is allocated to turtle stockings?

[Spoonplugger]

Here are details on the Urban Fishing Program, because it is a nice money maker for AZ G&F.

As stated in the previous post, it costs about $640,000 to buy and deliver the Urban Fishing Program fish. This money comes from our federal Sport Fish Restoration Trust Fund.




The AZ G&F portion of the program is basically matched by the City Parks funding of the Urban Fishing Program. I was able to get the annual cost on all but three cities. You can see that it looks like AZ G&F gets about $1000 per acre of contribution from the City Parks department. This is what I used to estimate Phoenix, Tempe, and Surprise.



That covers the AZ G&F state based revenue (the 25%) requirement in order to receive in the other 75% of our federal Sport Fish trust fund.

Here's where the money is... Urban Licenses Revenue:



$779,000 in revenue! Some of that money could definitely help toward warm water fishery management of AZ reservoirs! Between the Urban licensing revenue and the City Parks contributions, the program could nearly fund itself.

Also, roughly 25% of the urban fishing angler use days are children under 14, which get to fish for free...along with the youth fishing education programs. Good stuff!

All of the licensing data is in the AZ G&F annual report: http://www.azgfd.gov/inside_azgfd/annual_report.shtml

The other benefit for the AZ G&F is that the Urban Fishing Program makes use of the federal Sport Fish appropriated money, i.e. money that is designated for a specific purpose...and by the way, it is federally audited. The City Park money goes into a G&F trust fund, which gives more freedom to how it is spent. This money goes into the same bucket as the private donations bucket:




These are the 2011 and 2012 numbers -- the AZ G&F trust/donation fund seems to be doing well with around $2 million.



Also, the $779,000 urban license revenue goes into the general Game and Fish fund.

Summary:

City Parks Revenue: $167,000
Urban License Revenue: $779,000
Federal Sport Fish Restoration Program Revenue: $636,000

-159k for State Matching Funds (25%)
-640k to buy/deliver fish

+ $775,000 of non-appropriated funds annually...via the Urban Fishing Program.



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[Spoonplugger]

Here is a first pass at trying to estimate the revenue for 2014 licenses. This should at least give an idea about the effect of the change. I used the 2012 licensing data and describe how I combined the current license system into the new General Fish license. The 2012 Fishing license revenue was $10.3 million--according to the federal Sport Fish Fund data.

One big change is that non-resident general hunt must buy a combo fish/hunt. I am assuming that the $160 is split $80 toward hunt and $80 toward fish.

Another unknown is Urban Licenses. They are still offered as an independent license at $24, but I don't know how many people are purchasing Urban only. I'm assuming a big chunk of the 30,000 urban licenses are purchased by people who hold General Fish licenses (in 2014, urban is included with General Fish). I left this number blank. I am guessing it would add an extra couple 100k to the bottom line each year.

Look these over - let me know where I am messing up...




Here is how I combined the current licenses into the General Fish res/non-res. I think Youth and Combo type of licenses were pretty self explanatory on how to combine.



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