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Show FISH, GAME AND RECREATIONAL ASPECTS by Commissioner N. B. Cook The Fish and Game Department of the State of Utah, under most trying circumstances and with limited revenue, has, in the last eight years, put upwards of $ 100,000.00 in reclaiming depleted duck marsh, flooding barren lands, and starting food to make better conditions for migratory wildfowl, with the thought of making better hunting for the common run of sportsmen. For the past thirty years, individual gun clubs have been taking up all the choice areas and natural habitat for birds. Irrigation has played its part in draining much of this marsh area, by the construction of dams in the higher country for irrigation and power projects, until we find it very difficult now in the State of Utah for the individual boy with a limited amount of means to find a place where he might pursue ducks and geese and other migratory birds. The gun clubs are composed of men who can afford to pay a reasonable fee to maintain a club* With the thought that a large percentage of our people, who might be classed as common sportsmen, cannot afford to pay such a fee, the Game Department has in the past and is now undertaking these projects. We have now in the making our Locomotive Springs project in northern Box Elder County. We are endeavoring to secure the money from the Reconstruction Finance Company to finance the project and we believe we have a self- liquidating project. It is our intention to charge a limited fee per day for hunters on that project. We proposo to make bass fishing there and charge a fee for the same. And its development as a fur- bearing project will, beyond question, in our minds, make that project self- sustaining and liquidate itself after the first five years. We are willing to chance this on a project one hundred miles from Salt Lake City, the center of our population. This, in itself, should be proof to any group of men that such a project as a fresh water lake adjacent to Salt Lake City would be a very feasible and logical thing from" the sportsmen* s standpoint. And with a reasonable hunting fee charged, inasmuch as it would be within the reach of all hunters, many thousand men would each year be able to hunt birds on this proposed project. Immediately upon putting fresh water into the lake the vegetation would start growing, and by planting moss, Widgeon grass and wild rice, etc., it should be a haven for migratory wildfowl and a hunter* s paradise, for the common boy, who has for so long been neglected in our State. Relative to fishing in this proposed project will only say that much depends upon the condition of the water relative to minerals and so on, the depth of the water and the fluctuation during the spawning seasons. However, we are of the opinion that even though that water may never be a trout water there are many warm water fish that could be introduced into this project that should., beyond doubt, furnish fishing for this part of the State. Such a project will net only increase the number of fishermen, but will have a tendency to lessen the demand made upon our trout streams. - 28 - |
