Legislation

Bill to save Salisbury fish hatchery moves to Senate floor

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By Guy Page

A bill to allocate $550,000 to operate the Salisbury fish hatchery next year and create longterm funding options was approved by a Senate committee last week and goes to the full Senate this week.

S312, sponsored by the Senate Institutions Committee, was approved Friday by that committee and faces a preliminary vote in the Senate on Tuesday.

The bill will be reported to the Senate on behalf of Institutions by Sen. Russ Ingalls (R-Orleans) who has spearheaded the effort to restore funding to the fish hatchery vital to maintaining the state’s trout population.

The Department of Fish & Wildlife announced earlier this year, with some regret, that the hatchery would be closed for budget reasons. Sportsmen pushed back with an advocacy campaign. Ingalls said before the Town Meeting break that there is near-unanimous support for the bill in the Senate.

As introduced, the bill also would require that any decision to close the hatchery would rest in the hands of the Legislature, not the Fish & Wildlife Department. 

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Categories: Legislation, Outdoors

8 replies »

  1. Perhaps if the hatchery was special
    Place for trans Vermonters its future would be assured and funded

  2. it sure looks like every one wants control of a bankrupt state///

  3. Take the $500,000+ out of the Environmental Justice budget grift and save the fish! Fish lives matter! Save the eco-system! Equity for our fish now! Discriminating against rainbow trout is systemic racism and intolerance.

  4. Im considering not registering my dogs with town this year. When the animal control officer contacts me i will let him know they all identify as cats which do not require registration. Failure to affirm their identities would be transpeciesphobic imo.

  5. $550,000? Seems like a small drop in our state budget to fullfill for an installation that helps the state’s fish liscencing and tourist attraction dollars flourish. Why not allocate some of the lottery education proceeds towards it. That is where our lottery proceeds go, correct? Seems to me perhaps audits of those funds are in order.

    • H805, a bill to try and fix the education funding problems created by act 127 cost the tax payers an additional $500,000.00. This could’ve just been spent on the hatchery in the first place if legislators hadn’t been so short sighted and “equity” driven in drafting 127. More tax payer dollars wasted to fix government created problems.