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Story Archives: Region 4 Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries office at Ferriday closing
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Region 4 Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries office at Ferriday closing
The Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries (LDWF) Region 4 office in Ferriday will be closed on September 18 due to budget shortfalls, LDWF Secretary Robert Barham said Tuesday.
"All state departments are facing real budget challenges like every other state, and our numbers look really bleak," he said.
He said the Ferriday office will be closed because "it does not have a record of a huge volume of walk-in traffic. The usage by the public is not high and the (facility) is not in good shape. We don't have the money to construct a new facility."
He said operations will be consolidated out of the Alexandria and Monroe offices but no one will lose their job. Only a handful of the employees assigned to the Ferriday office actually work at the facility, Barham said.
"Things will continue as always," he said. "It's something we hate to do, but we had no choice due to the numbers."
Barham said license sales overall "have been stagnant and our budget is self-generated. The sale of hunting and fishing licenses is what drives this department and they have not been growing.
"When I was a kid growing up you picked up a rod or gun and headed to the lake or woods. Kids now favor the video monitor and malls. They're not as interested now in hunting and fishing. It's distressing, but that's what we're dealing with."
Barham said the LDWF, which has a $100 million annual budget, is also facing expenses today that didn't exist a few years ago.
"We have an intense fight on our hands with invasive aquatics," he said. "It's costing us $8 million a year."
He said the department is also the lead agency on search and rescue efforts during natural disasters, such as hurricanes.
"We will always respond and last year we had a major rescue effort in Franklin Parish during the last set of storms," he said. |
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