It was mostly a joke. Although much truth is said in jest.
Or, in this case, at least some truth. Maybe. And some jest.
And my intent was mostly lighthearted when I wrote and sent this tweet a week or so ago:
“This just in from Gov. Kristi Noem: the state Game, Fish & Parks Department will merge with the state Department of Tourism to form the state Department of Tourism & Outdoor Recreation. But don’t blow your lid. I’M JUST KIDDING! I think. @IanTFury, I am just kidding, right?”
That Twitter shout out was to Ian Fury, communications director for the governor. And the tweet was inspired by Gov. Noem’s recent merger of the state Department of Agriculture and the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
These are two agencies with some common purposes, some that conflict and many that are not really related. It’s the conflicts that worry me. And the priorities. Noem, a farmer with powerful farm-ranch alliances, was clearly inspired to merge Ag and DENR primarily to benefit farmers, ranchers, and ag processors, not to improve environmental protection.
There could be some environmental benefits from the merger, I suppose, although I can’t see how. Noem and others involved in the merger say that is a goal, too. So we’ll see. But it’s clear in the way the merger was designed and presented that ag was intended to be the main beneficiary. Noem also says it will save money and make things more efficient.
We’ll see on that, too. Efficiency and saving money have tended not to work toward environmental protection in the past.
But how do we get from that kind of stuff to my tweet to Ian Fury? Oh, simple logic. For years there have been some common areas between Game, Fish & Parks, and Tourism. Hunting and fishing are part of tourism promotion. Parks are part of it, too. And over the years, there have been some pretty easy and comfortable cooperation between GF&P and Tourism on parks promotion, and more complicated cooperation between the two departments on hunting and fishing.
Looking back to when Tourism, GF&P sparred over promotions
There have been some conflicts, too. Because hunting and fishing are based on a finite number of living critters and, especially in hunting, limited areas and opportunities to get access to those critters. Promoting Mount Rushmore isn’t like promoting pheasant hunting, yet over time these different promotional challenges have too often been handled much the same.
When I worked for Tourism in the mid-1980s, we had meetings with GF&P folks on how to match our promotion with the status of game and fish populations. Some at GF&P had complained, rightly, that in the past Tourism had sometimes exaggerated the opportunities for hunters and anglers.
We were trying to find a balance. I’m not sure we ever did. I was with Tourism for only two years, although I’ve covered GF&P and Tourism for more than 40 years.
Somewhere back in the early years of my coverage, there was a move to combine the public information offices of Tourism and GF&P, in part for efficiency and savings and in part to have a more consistent message. That move got killed pretty quickly by GF&P.
Resident sportsmen, including those in the South Dakota Wildlife Federation and its local affiliates, have always had some conflicts with Tourism over hunting promotion. Many residents feel like they live here for very specific reasons and hunting and fishing are among the priorities. Residents increasingly feel pushed out of what they considered to be their outdoor birthright by promotions and commercial hunting aimed at serving non-resident hunters.
Local anglers also complain about the influx of non-resident fishermen to public waters and blame Tourism promotion.
Balancing promotion with wildlife management
Then there’s the whole idea of sustaining proper wildlife-management principles in the face of economic and political pressures. When Gov. Noem came up with a program to boost pheasant numbers based on habitat programs, she was giving a nod to proven wildlife science. When she came up with a “nest-predator” program based on paying bounties on certain predators and giving away free traps to encouraging trapping and targeting those predators, she departed from proven wildlife science.
A long-standing area of conflict between GF&P and Tourism was the annual August pheasant survey by GF&P and, especially the way information from those counts was presented. When the counts have been down and that news was released, the number of non-resident pheasant hunters tended to drop, along with their spending.
That hurts tourism in general and businesses in prime pheasant country in particular. So there has long been pressure to hide or alter the bad news in pheasant surveys. Noem and her GF&P administrators “solved” that problem area of conflict by ending the summer pheasant surveys entirely.
In addition, Noem has pushed more directly for cooperation between Tourism and GF&P in promoting pheasant hunting in particular. Keloland News state Capitol reporter Bob Mercer wrote of it last January after a meeting of the state Game, Fish & Parks Commission, whose members are appointed by the governor and oversee GF&P operations.
Kelly Hepler, who has since retired as head of GF&P, told the commission members then that Noem wanted “stronger promotion” of South Dakota pheasant hunting in 2020.
Mercer wrote: “Hepler said he and state Tourism Secretary Jim Hagen, with members of their staffs, are assembling a plan that builds on what their departments had already been doing.”
Mercer also noted that former Noem communications director Emily Kiel had moved to GF&P to work on joint promotions.
So what’s a resident sportsman to do, besides worry?
Such developments worry many resident sportsmen and their umbrella organizations. They already often feel like they are second-class outdoor citizens because of the emphasis on non-resident dollars. And this makes them fearful of what might come next.
Noem spoke about what could come next in her 2020 State of the State address, saying that GF&P would be working in partnership with Tourism on hunting promotions. That increased emphasis on promoting hunting has been clear in GF&P releases I’ve received this fall and early winter, which are much more frequent and have more of a promotions-type message than in the past.
So, for many years there was an uncomfortable working relationship with occasional conflicts between GF&P and Tourism. Now there now seems to be a smooth, seamless partnership of promotion. Could that all be part of a move toward more cooperation and partnerships and possibly a merger in some or all department functions?
Logic would suggest otherwise. The agencies are very different overall. But politics and logic often conflict.
And one long-time Capitol observer I know says it might not make any practical difference if the two departments actually merge or not: “They’re already joined at the hip.”
I don’t think it was a compliment or a joke.
And speaking of jokes, let’s get back to my tweet, which Ian Fury didn’t find humorous and hasn’t answered. Well, he has responded. He just hasn’t answered. I gave him several chances, and he offered only moderately unfriendly rebuttals to the notion that I should even have the audacity to ask about a merger.
You know the routine, calling me a purveyor of fake news, and things like that.
But one key thing he didn’t say, despite the opportunities I gave him, was that merging GF&P and Tourism was not on the table with Noem as a discussion point or possibility.
Now, maybe that’s just because Fury doesn’t want to engage in speculation with reporters, including old, semi-retired reporters. That I can understand, I guess.
But maybe it’s more than that. Maybe such a merger has been discussed or is being discussed, to one degree or another, so Fury neither wants to deny or confirm it at this point.
Of course, it’s possible that it doesn’t matter much either way, given the hard push by Noem for cooperation and joint promotional work between the two departments.
Which really does make it appear that they’re joined at the hip already.
