Let's connect public with public access properties
Source: TheMorningCall.com, by Christian Berg
September 11, 2007
There's an old philosophy question that asks, 'If a tree falls in the woods and there's no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?'
Along those same lines, officials from the state Game Commission are wrestling with this one: 'If a property is enrolled in a public access program and the public doesn't know about it, does it really matter?'
I don't know the answer to the first question, but the answer to No. 2 is a resounding no. Yet it appears that is exactly what is happening -- or not happening -- with many private lands supposedly open to public hunting.
Commission officials often tout the opportunities available to sportsmen on the roughly 4 million acres covered by more than 28,000 properties enrolled in the agency's Safety Zone, Farm-Game and Forest-Game cooperative programs.
In reality, the acreage open to public hunting is considerably less. Just how much less is anyone's guess, since commission officials are still trying to figure it out.
Gary Camus, chief of the commission's federal aid and public access division, said widespread problems with the agency's public access database surfaced last October after the agency published on its Web site new, county-by-county maps of public access properties.
Shortly after the maps were released, the commission started receiving complaints from hunters who said some properties listed on the maps were no longer open to hunting. Some had been removed from the programs, others had been sold and still others had been developed. The commission also received a number of complaints from participating landowners upset that their locations were posted on the Internet.
'Enrollment in a public access program implies, by its very nature, that the public will be notified of your involvement and your desire to have public hunting and trapping on your property,' commission spokesman Jerry Feaser said. 'But that wasn't always the case with some of our landowners.'
As a result of the inaccuracies and landowner concerns, the commission in April pulled the public access maps off its Web site. The agency is trying to contact every landowner in the public access database to determine whether they still own the properties and wants to continue in the program.
Camus said public access cooperators will receive registration renewal forms in the mail this month, along with a letter explaining all cooperators must agree to post an official public access sign and have their location marked on the commission's public access maps.
Camus said he isn't sure when updated public access maps will be available because it depends on how quickly landowners respond. Property owners who do not respond and can't be contacted by the agency will be purged from the public access database, Camus said.
'When we are finished, we expect the program will be much stronger than before,' Camus recently told Pennsylvania Outdoor News. 'We should have a pretty accurate accounting of which properties are enrolled and where they are located.'
There's no doubt the work being done by Camus will result in a major improvement to the commission's public access programs. As I'm sure my fellow sportsmen would agree, we're better off with 1 million acres of private land that's truly open than 4 million acres that aren't.
It's just too bad it took nearly five years and an entire set of unreliable maps to get here.
'Hindsight is 20/20,' said Feaser, adding that 'there was no reason for [Camus] or anyone else working on the project to believe the records were so far out of date as they appear to be.'
Maybe Feaser is right, but I find that hard to believe considering how much time and effort was spent on this project.
The initiative to create county-level public access maps started in 2003 thanks to a $74,800 grant from the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which kicked in another $85,000 toward the project in 2004.
The commission spent roughly two years creating the maps, and during that time, officials had to get an inkling some of their information was inaccurate. In an interview with The Morning Call last week, Camus acknowledged the commission hasn't had contact with some public access cooperators in five years.
If Camus wasn't aware of that prior to completing the first set of maps, then he wasn't asking enough questions. And if he was aware of the situation, he should be held accountable for publishing such dated information.
In addition to creating public access maps, part of the NSSF grant money was used to survey hunters and participating landowners about the public access program and how it can be improved. In retrospect, Feaser said, the commission 'maybe put the cart before the horse' by publishing the maps before the survey work was completed.
However, Feaser said, any mistakes were the result of a well-intentioned effort to let sportsmen know about local hunting and trapping opportunities. Prior to the existing mapping project, the last public access maps were produced in 1991.
'We were trying to expedite this,' Feaser said. 'We wanted to get some real information in the hands of the hunters quickly.'
The commission's eagerness is certainly understandable, considering it had been 15 years since the maps were last updated. I, too, was enthusiastic about the project, and I previously wrote two articles highlighting the maps and encouraging local sportsmen to take advantage of them.
Still, the commission's eagerness doesn't excuse the mistakes that were made, and the agency clearly could have handled the mapping project more efficiently and communicated more effectively with cooperating landowners.
However, they aren't the only ones to blame for the current mess. I find it incredulous that some landowners who enrolled in the public access program now object to letting the public know about their involvement. Granted, there aren't many benefits to being a public access cooperator. There's certainly no money in it, and even the free Game News magazine subscriptions have been discontinued.
But if you're interested in getting sportsmen's help to manage deer, groundhogs and other wildlife on your land, you can't complain too loudly when people knock on your door and ask permission to hunt.
After all, it's not really a public access program if the public isn't invited.
