NCWRC and NCMFD to Merge!
Monday, March 31, 2008 (00:55:00)

Posted by Admin

The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission and the Marine Fisheries Commission to merge!

It is official, by an act of the North Carolina legislature, Senate Bill #102, on March 31, 2009, the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission and the North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission are to become one agency to benefit and serve all of North Carolina citizens.

The listed benefit to this action, according to the press release, is for this newly created agency to become the premiere agency for legislating, enforcing, and managing our states wildlife and fisheries resources in both the inland and coastal areas. This does make sense from a costing standpoint since now there will only be one bureaucracy controlling our wildlife resources and not two. So, if you like to hunt and/or fish in North Carolina, there will be one agency to deal with in order to get all of your hunting, fishing, and boating licenses, permits, and registrations.

If you look at paragraph 7 of the newly passed law, it is interesting to note that it will be the smaller Marine Fisheries Commission that will be absorbing the Wildlife Resources Commission. There was no reason stated for this, but like all decisions made by our elected officials, I am sure that political maneuverings are at work here.

A quick look at the pros and cons of this new law:

Pros:
For those who like to fish at the coast, now we can get one annual fishing license valid for the whole state.
The cost of personnel to manage our statewide wildlife resources will be reduced since we will only need one management team to lead this new agency, not two.
This cost savings could be used to put more agents, biologists, and technicians in the field enforcing, managing, and building new boating access areas, firing ranges, etc.
Elected officials can now place their Wildlife and Marine Fisheries appointees in one group. This will help them in their attempt to oversee the actions of the new agency to ensure that it complies with the needs of their constituents. With this new law, they will only have to supervise one and not two agencies.

Cons:
This depends on whether you are a constituent of an elected official or the elected official, but the number of Commissioners, or "appointees", will be reduced by one-half. This means that there will be fewer positions to hand out to the financial contributors of each elected official charged with the task of appointing people to these positions. This could cause a problem within our political process. Maybe those who want such a position would have to pay more for the position? Who knows, such a move just may increase the amount of political contributions, not decrease the amount of financial contributions. The law of supply and demand at work here? We will ave to wait and see.

This new law is slated to take effect on June 31, 2010, the last day of the 2009-2010 state fiscal year.

There is no such date on our calendar and there is no such law. This article was posted on April 1, 2009. Happy April Fools Day.