The cheapest freshwater fishing licence Virginia has offered since 2012 is probably gone this week — and the anglers who pay for it are not speaking with one voice.
Virginia's Board of Wildlife Resources sits Wednesday and Thursday in Henrico County to vote on a package the Department of Wildlife Resources put out in July: higher hunting, fishing and trapping licence fees, higher motorboat registration fees, new boating safety rules, a $10 permit to camp on department land, and a batch of endangered and invasive species regulations. Cardinal News used a Freedom of Information Act request to pull the public comments after the window shut on 5 August. More than 1,200 came in.
Resident increases run roughly $5 to $20 depending on the package; non-residents face up to $50. A one-year resident hunting or freshwater fishing licence moves from $22 to $27, and many boat fees rise $5.
The pressure behind those figures is heavier than they look. DWR borrowed $6.9 million from the state treasury in June to make payroll and clear overdue contractor payments and travel reimbursements. The loan runs interest-free over two years, and it comes with a string attached — the agency has to actually pursue the fee increases its board signed off on.
DWR is an outlier among Virginia agencies in taking no general fund money at all. Licences, boat registrations and federal dollars are the whole budget. Licence fees have been frozen since 2012 and boat registrations since 2019, while the state added free and reduced-price licences without replacing the lost revenue.
A 2019 legislative watchdog review found no structural deficit and about $37 million in reserves, though it already warned revenue was lagging inflation. "Report writers at that time could not have foreseen the accelerated rate of inflation and increases to the cost of doing business that DWR has experienced since the pandemic," agency spokeswoman Shelby Crouch told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. A budget that was roughly $67 million in 2019 would need about $86 million now to buy the same services.
Secretary of Natural and Historic Resources David Bulova said the workload has grown regardless — human-wildlife conflict, invasive species, endangered species — without matching money. "While the agency has done their part to request added support for these duties, those requests went unheeded," Bulova said. Budget proposals in 2022 and 2024 both died.
Governor Abigail Spanberger's office approved the loan and pointed at the previous administration. "Governor Spanberger is committed to restoring stability to the Department of Wildlife Resources after the previous administration ignored years of warnings and jeopardized the agency's long-term mission," spokesman Jack Bledsoe said.
DWR executive director Ryan Brown told staff in an internal video that the borrowing itself makes the argument. "This will be a very stark sign to the rest of Virginia that, hey, there's a need here, and it needs to be addressed going forward," Brown said.
The people filling in the comment form weighed it differently.
Edward Warmus of Warrenton, on a fixed Social Security income, described a slow squeeze. "If the fee increases become excessive, the choice might be hanging up the hunting rifle which I don't want to do," Warmus wrote.
Raymond Carter of King William County thought the department was patching rather than fixing, describing a flat increase without exploring alternatives as "putting a band-aid on a hemorrhage." He wanted the money pulled from targeted sources instead — the Deer Management Assistance Program fee, the Public Access Lands for Sportsmen fee, the Virginia State Forest Use Permit — and pointed out that hound hunters remain one of the few groups without a permit of their own.
Support came with strings too. Keegan Gordon of Narrows wrote that he would pay more provided the money went to "good," then defined it: "I expect to see national forest gates open in SWVA, and it be taken care of better all over Virginia, not just [the] northern part where y'all make the most money."
The $10 camping permit drew over 100 comments by itself and produced the sharpest split. Patrick Carey of Powhatan called the free-camping framing "misleading." As he put it: "Access to these lands is already funded through the purchase of hunting, fishing, trapping, or other qualifying licenses. At the same time, DWR is proposing increases to many of those license fees." Charles Hurt of Gordonsville simply wrote: "It has always been free and should stay free!"
Conservation items attracted less heat. Peggy Clark of Radford supported adding Abrams Creek and its tributaries in Washington County to waters closed to seines, traps and nets, protecting the state-endangered Tennessee dace. Another rule would end the taking of snapping turtles on trotlines, juglines, limblines and set poles. Richard Hynes of Earlysville connected the argument back to the budget: "The DWR needs more revenue to hire more conservation officers."
Committees meet Wednesday, the full board votes Thursday, and anyone can sign up to speak in person or online.
