Ohio Division of Wildlife's bottom line weathering COVID-19's impact

A largely steady stream of revenue and multi-year fiscal planning are helping to buffer the Ohio Division of Wildlife’s bottom line during the on-going coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis.

This, in spite of the fact the agency has taken in reduced fishing license sale receipts - about $567,335 less - than it had for the same period last year.

Also, Wildlife Division officials say the COVID-19 emergence has impacted the agency in other ways. Among them are the protocols of how officials communicate with each other. And these changes are likely to continue even after a vaccine is found for the virus, too.

“Right now we’re trying to grasp the breadth and depth of COVID-19, and how that applies to hunting and fishing license sales,” said Pete Novotny, the Wildlife Division’s assistant chief in charge of fiscal and other administrative chores.

“We need to see if this track is going to continue long-term and what that will mean, but we’re only two months or so months into this thing.”

Novotny says because the Wildlife Division has a strategy that calls for three- to five-year planning cycles, particularly on capital improvement projects, it is less dependent upon living paycheck-to-paycheck like many people and even some businesses.

“What I don’t want to do is make light of how so many Ohioans and businesses are hurting,” Novotny said, though adding the Wildlife Division’s long-term planning strategy does “give us some leverage in continuing to move forward.”

Likewise, says Novotny, the agency has a shrunken workforce and today stands at about 400 employees.

That figure has proven itself a bone of some contention with some of Wildlife Division’s staff. These individuals are critical of the Wildlife Division’s reorganization and reduction of the agency’s Lake Erie law enforcement unit, under-cover operations, district law supervisory posts, and other related fish-and-game law enforcement duties.

The charge is that such actions undermines the Wildlife Division’s ability to properly track the Lake Erie commercial fisheries and effectively conduct investigations into poaching rings.

For its part, the parent Ohio Department of Natural Resources says such personnel cuts are also a part of its long-term planning, noting how it has asked “..all sections, including the law enforcement group, to review positions and make recommendations for efficiencies to ensure we are being responsible with sportsmen’s and women’s dollars,” said the Department’s chief of Commnications Sarah Wickham.

“We want to increase the visibility of wildlife officers and uniformed staff.  We want all counties to be filled and have wildlife officers in reserve to take care of any vacancies that would occur into the future,” Wickham said.

Even so, the Wildlife Division remains on track to complete any number of high-profile and expensive capital improvement projects.

Among them, says Novotny, are the long-awaited improvements to the agency’s popular Spring Valley and Delaware wildlife areas’ metallic shooting ranges.

“We’re proud they’ll be up and running,” likely later this year, Novotny says.

Less certain are smaller projects that are vital but not necessarily critical at the moment. For these projects the Wildlife Division hopes they might be able to see them “pushed back a couple of months” until more favorable cash flow occurs, Novotny says.

“We are looking at what we need to finish and what can be done and still meet federal (matching) grant requirements,” Novotny said. “But I am optimistic enough.”

Novotny says he also is hopeful people who have been cooped up for months on end might very well want to explore the idea of hunting and fishing, both to recreate and possibly help ease their own respective food budgets.

“Maybe we can help motivate more people to look at these pursuits,” he said.

One unforeseen element the Wildlife Division has encountered during the COVID-19 crisis is showing up in how agency officials conduct meetings – both with the public and in-house with individual employees, Novotny says.

With today’s access to live/interactive telecommunications, Wildlife Division officials are learning they don’t always have to drive from one end of the state to the other in order to discuss an issue, talk out a problem or resolve a dispute, Novotny says.

Such get-togethers are being shrunk to the size of a computer’s screen footprint with the images and voices of the participants sharing air time, breaking new ground electronically, Novotny says.

“We’re learning and adapting,” Novotny says.

- Jeffrey L. Frischkorn
JFrischk@Ameritech.net
JFrischk4@gmail.com