The Brule River State Fish Hatchery has reared trout in northern Wisconsin for nearly a century. This year its raceways sit empty — and anglers warn the state is gambling with a fishery worth roughly a billion dollars a year.
A funding standoff between Democratic Gov. Tony Evers' administration and Republican legislators left the Department of Natural Resources without the spending authority it said it needed. The agency closed the Brule and Osceola hatcheries and announced deep cuts to stocking statewide. At one point it proposed slashing musky stocking by 70 percent and walleye by 45 percent — more than half a million fish. After the Legislature's finance committee approved $4 million in additional authority in May, the DNR said it had nearly restored musky stocking and trimmed the overall reduction to about 7 percent. Brule and Osceola, however, will stay closed for the year.
That decision has infuriated anglers in a state where fishing is written into the constitution — 82 percent of voters enshrined the right to hunt and fish in 2003.
"Our Legislature has an ultimate responsibility to fund Wisconsin natural resources: the fisheries, the wildlife, the law enforcement, the parks and rec," said Tom Johnson of the Douglas County Fish and Game League. "They failed us."
For the staff who raise the fish, the timing is unforgiving. Brule normally finishes growing about 160,000 brown trout each summer after they are transferred from the Les Voigt hatchery; last year the system stocked 372,000 brown trout into Lakes Superior and Michigan. Stocking is planned two years out, and the biology does not wait.
"If we do not collect eggs at a certain time, we can't come back a month later and pick up eggs," said Darren Miller, who supervises the Les Voigt and Brule hatcheries. "We operate on what Mother Nature does, and there's a narrow window when she's supplying our eggs that we need for our production."
"That is unacceptable. This should not have happened," said Sen. Romaine Quinn, R-Birchwood, whose district includes the Brule hatchery. "Republicans did not cut any money from the fisheries budget."
Rep. Mark Born, who co-chairs the budget-writing committee, was just as pointed. "The DNR needs to do its job, use the authority that was approved and focus on carrying out its core fish and wildlife responsibilities instead of pointing fingers over agency-made deadlines and management decisions," he said.
Democrats countered that the GOP-controlled committee sat on the request. "I think that they did the best with what they could, but the delay on this committee, I think, significantly impacted that," said Rep. Tip McGuire, D-Kenosha. Rep. Deb Andraca, D-Whitefish Bay, offered a wry verdict on the delay: "But the good news is that fish too shall pass."
Underneath the blame lies a long-running money problem. The fish and wildlife account has run a $16 million shortfall, with license fees largely flat since 2005 even as costs climb. A 50-pound bag of fish food that "used to be about $16," Miller said, "now, it's about $55" — and feed prices have risen more than 200 percent in two decades. Eric Lobner, the DNR's Fish, Wildlife and Parks division administrator, said the agency has been holding operations together with "shoe strings and duct tape."
Buying fish on the private market is not a simple fix. Fisheries Management Bureau Director Justine Hasz said outside hatcheries may not carry stock with the right genetics, and the DNR is short on the food and staff to rear more of its own. "There's only so many fish we can produce at this point," she said.
Adena Rissman, a professor of ecosystem management at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the squeeze has been building for years. "After decades of cuts and budgets not keeping up with inflation, they just end up doing less," she said. "This means less of what hunters, anglers and all people outdoors want."
For Todd Berg of the newly formed Friends of Wisconsin Fisheries, the lesson is simple, and most anglers he talks to back paying more to fix it. "No business can survive without proper budget planning," he said.