Gov. Gretchen Whitmer wants to hike fees for hunting, fishing and watercraft by nearly $30 million in her record $86 billion spending plan, but House Republicans are standing in her way.

While details of the governor’s plan remain elusive, legislation introduced during the 2024 lame duck legislative session suggest it could hike licenses by 50%, effectively restricting access to the state’s natural resources amid a decades long decline in participation.

“There’s a lot of fat that needs to be trimmed first,” John Hendrickson, an Upper Peninsula outdoorsman who supported a plan to raise funds for the DNR with a license for additional rods for those who troll the Great Lakes, told MLive. “Get your boots on the ground and get busy.”

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Officials with Whitmer’s Department of Natural Resources ultimately did not go with the plan to raise revenues with an additional license, but now contend the department faces a roughly $4.6 million deficit if lawmakers don’t act to hike fees.

Facing an intense backlash from last year’s legislation and a separate plan to clear cut state forests to raise funds from solar leases, DNR staff have spent recent weeks pleading poverty with predictions of serious consequences for inaction.

Randy Claramunt, the DNR’s fisheries chief, likened the situation to stripping rivets from an airplane’s wing in comments to MLive.

“From a budgetary standpoint, we’re taking rivets off, we’re just pulling them off,” he said. “The plane will keep flying until that one rivet results in the plane coming apart in midair and crashing … We’re at that last rivet.”

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State Rep. Ken Borton, the Gaylord Republican who chairs the DNR’s appropriations subcommittee, has a different perspective.

“I don’t know how much clearer I can make myself; if DNR leadership continues this ridiculous crusade to hike fees across the board – an action that does nothing but punish those who love the outdoors – we are going to zero out their budget,” Borton said in a statement when Whitmer introduced her budget last month.

“This is not a threat,” he said. “This will be their reality if the DNR does not commit to working with us to protect access to the outdoors.”

Multiple former DNR officials have contacted Borton to help the lawmaker zero in on the department’s wasteful spending, he said during a legislative roundtable in Bellaire on Saturday.

“We’re going to eliminate a lot of nonsense,” Borton said.

Only about 1% of the DNR’s budget comes from state funding, while the majority stems from hunting and fishing license fees, and federal excise taxes on hunting and fishing equipment that’s rationed to states based on license sales.

Michigan last increased fees in 2014, and DNR officials have pointed to higher fees in other states to justify an increase. They’ve noted declining license sales and increasing costs, as well as a $200 million maintenance backlog in the state park system.

Last year’s legislation aimed to boost revenues for fish and game by about $22 million through fee increases of about 50%, a reduction in the senior discount from 60% to 25%, and other changes, such as lowering the age in which a fishing license is required. The effort also aimed to tie future license increases to inflation.

The legislation, along efforts to shift the state’s recreation passport for parks from an opt-in to an opt-out system, ultimately stalled out amid a chaotic lame duck session and strong Republican opposition led by Borton, who has cited complaints about conservation officers harassing hunters and issues with poorly plowed boat launches restricting access for anglers.

“What I want to be able to do is put pressure on them again to improve their product, improve their customer service, like any other business would,” Borton told MLive.

“Residents across the state have made their voices clear; they are tired of the skyrocketing prices,” several lawmakers wrote in a Dec. 5 letter to DNR Director Scott Bowen. “Attempting to push fee increases and a recreation passport opt-out during a lame-duck legislative session is inherently dishonest to the people you serve. The DNR should expand its sales by providing better products and services to the public.”

While Whitmer’s plan to increase the DNR’s budget by $29 million has not yet come with legislation on the details, the state’s major conservation groups highlighted a need for a “longer-term” solution to fund the DNR that doesn’t rely so heavily on hunters and anglers.

“Hunters, anglers and trappers are proud to currently contribute tens of millions of dollars in license revenue each year for funding fish and wildlife conservation in Michigan, representing the vast majority of the Fish and Game Protection Fund, but there is a need to expand this pool,” a conservation coalition of two dozen groups wrote in a letter to legislative leaders in November.

Taylor Ridderbusch, the DNR’s executive policy advisor, told MLive other ideas involve appropriating a portion of the state’s sales tax, or the creation of a trust fund that would offer revenue through earnings and interest.

The latter, he said, would require a “big number” investment from taxpayers, while others have suggested the former is politically impractical.

“I think a lot of hunters are frustrated with the way the department operates, and they were resistant to even that license (fee) change,” Justin Tomei, policy and government affairs manager for Michigan United Conservation Clubs, told the news site. And then you start talking raising taxes in this political climate, and that’d be a hill I’m not sure that can be climbed right now.”

The Michigan DNR generated about $63.7 million from all license sales in fiscal year 2024, according to Michigan Public.

The year prior, hunting and fishing license sales brought in $56.9 million, with roughly 47% coming from fishing licenses and 53% from hunting license sales.

“In Michigan, 67% of all hunting license revenue and 35% of all hunting and fishing license revenue is derived from deer licenses” – $20 million, according to a “License Fee Bill Justification” fact sheet distributed by the DNR last year.

If the DNR wants more, Borton said, DNR Director Bowen, a former lottery commissioner appointed by Whitmer in 2023, will need to explain the fine details to House Republicans.

“If fee increases are so important, the director is going to have to sit in our public meeting and explain exactly why he needs them and why the money he already has – which many would say is grossly misspent – isn’t enough,” Borton said last month. “He’s going to have to justify every single dollar they want to spend. If the committee is convinced, it goes into the budget. If not, try again next year.”