DNR needs to get with the new technology
Published Wednesday September 24th, 2008
Another hunting season kicks off tomorrow morning with the annual moose hunt.
It's just as well I was one of the 55,000 New Brunswickers who didn't get drawn -- yet again -- for a moose tag. Where would I ever put it?
The wallet's already full, even though there's no money in it.
But there's a salmon licence folded up in there somewhere, and tucked behind that is a guide's licence.
The coyote licence is jammed in the other side, under the deer licence and beside the duck licence.
The bear licence is in the place where the money usually goes, right beside the different registration papers for my four favourite firearms and next to a piece of paper that I have no clue what it is but it says on it that I have to carry it along with the registration papers, so there it is.
Oh, and then there's the boat registration, the boat operator's permit and the ATV registration -- and insurance cards for everything, of course, next to the driver's licence.
Hunters and fishermen like to pretend they're macho fellows, so carrying a man-purse for toting all this stuff through the bush is out of the question. And most of us like hunting and fishing partly to get away from everyone for just a few hours, so putting all that paperwork into our spouse's purse would defeat that purpose -- we'd have to bring her along on every trip, just to be legal, and whether she wants to or not.
Shoving that huge wad of licences and paperwork into a pocket won't work because they'd just get wet and would shred within an hour.
So what's the solution? A little research shows how other jurisdictions have conquered this conundrum many years ago -- a single licence to cover all of the ridiculous amount of permits a New Brunswicker needs just to hunt or fish in his home province.
A buddy of mine has a licence to drive his car, his motorcycle and his tractor-trailer, but he doesn't have three separate licences to lug around. He has one plastic licence, with three different endorsements printed on it.
What's so complicated about this that the Department of Natural Resources can't adopt the same procedures that Service New Brunswick perfected decades ago?
Sure, it's probably not reasonable to think the feds and the province could figure out how to put all their licences, registrations and other silliness on a single plastic card, but surely we could manage one card for the Ottawa paper-shufflers and another for the deskocrats in Fredericton, rather than dozens of sheets of paper for both governments.
A little checking shows just how far behind New Brunswick has fallen behind in this area.
Need a fishing licence in Maine? Just give them a call and tell them your credit card number. Need a hunting licence in Louisiana? Same deal. They'll issue you a receipt number so you can start hunting immediately, then mail you your licence the same day.
Several jurisdictions offer lifetime hunting and fishing licences. For example, in Illinois you pay 30 times the yearly licence fee and you are set for life, as long as you don't lose your privileges for breaking game or gun laws. In Louisiana, it's only 10 times the annual cost of a licence to set yourself up for the rest of your days.
In New Brunswick, we spend as much time waiting in line to fill out forms for licences and permits as some spend in the woods or on the water.
In an age where, in some countries, you can point your cell phone at a pop machine and press a code on the key pad and your debit account is automatically charged for your can of Diet Dr. Pepper, in New Brunswick we are still keeping hunting and fishing licence records by hand, in pencil and ink.
The convenience of one single card for all this stuff far outweighs the cost of a one-card system. Once conservation officers are set up with card readers or computers in their vehicles to check that hunters and fishermen have the correct endorsement on their licences, the mission would be complete.
It would likely spell the end of going down to the local confectioner to score a fishing licence, though, because sadly the cost of equipping all of them with the necessary computer equipment would be deemed too great.
It would be easy enough to allow the option of downloading extra licences and permits onto the card right at home for those who are equipped with card readers on their home computers and who have a credit card. Or the records of all your extra endorsements could remain in Fredericton, easily checked by conservation officers from their laptops in their trucks. Hey, the Mounties do this every minute of every day with drivers' licences.
The fact we have fallen so far behind in adopting this simple and very common technology suggests that hunters and fishermen, the very people who directly contribute more of their money to our fauna and fish than anyone, are not very high on the DNR's priority list.
Shortly after last year's deer season, a call to the DNR to see how many deer were shot resulted in no answer. They didn't know yet. The information was being collected by hand, scrawled down by over-worked staff at registration stations (corner stores and gas stations mostly) and mailed into the provincial government.
Someone ought to grab the DNR by the scruff of the neck and drag them kicking and screaming into the 1960s.
I would do it, but I'm too busy trying to find my abacus in anticipation of having to figure out how many moose were registered this weekend.
n City Views appears daily, written by various members of our staff. James Foster is editor-at-large. His column appears every Wednesday.
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