Conservation meetings in Wisconsin online for 2nd straight year

On the second Monday of April, you would normally find fishers and hunters gathered around Wisconsin for the yearly Conservation Congress. 

Just like last year, because of COVID-19, the meetings planned for next Monday will be online only. 

Marc Schultz is a Congress coordinator in La Crosse County, and he says fishing limits could be a popular subject for voting this spring.

“They see (violations of fishing rules) being repeated every day,” Schultz said, “and they say those are limits that wouldn’t normally be taking.”

Voting on 27 questions related to sports and conservation will be allowed on a DNR website for 72 hours, beginning Monday night.

A hot topic for last year’s meetings was deer hunting. People who voted on-line decided not to make any changes in Wisconsin’s 9-day gun-deer season.

Schultz says any item brought up for votes next week may take a year or two to become a law or a rule.

“Congress is advisory, it’s not regulatory,” he said. “And it takes a little while for that process to work. But we’ve seen in a lot of cases, citizens had ideas, brought them forward, and lo and behold, eventually they became some sort of a regulation or rule.”