Fish and Wildlife officials tell House Health Care committee hunting and fishing support food security

Jason Batchelder, who identified himself as commissioner of the Schwalek Department, told the House Committee on Health Care that the department’s licensing, hatcheries and outreach programs provide an important, low-cost source of meat and fish for many Vermonters. "What I look at when I come to work every day is how we can support people who are filling their freezer with venison, fish, bear meat, moose meat, and anything else they wanna legally harvest," Batchelder said.

Batchelder told members the department currently records about 109,000 resident hunters and anglers in Vermont and described a long-term decline in younger participants even as license sales rose during economic uncertainty such as the COVID pandemic. He and presenters stressed that lifetime licenses and age-based pricing complicate how participation is counted and that specialty tags and additional permits still carry separate fees.

An agency presenter who discussed the department’s analysis summarized replacement-cost research, saying Michigan State University’s state-by-state calculations put Vermont’s annual regulated-harvest replacement value at about $9,000,000 going into Vermonters’ freezers; the presenter noted that figure excludes fish, which could raise the estimate. "We're at about $9,000,000 going into Vermonters' freezers," the presenter said, describing a conservative methodology that used ground-beef multipliers.

The presenters gave several program examples that channel harvested meat into food-security systems. The "Venison for Vermonters" program, led by wardens, collects donated and salvaged carcasses, processes and distributes meat to food shelves; Batchelder said roughly 1,000 pounds from that effort are distributed quickly when available. The department also described outreach programs, "Let's Go Fishing" events and partnerships with kitchens and markets to teach safe handling and butchery techniques.

Committee members pushed on population and harvest numbers. Batchelder estimated Vermont’s white-tailed deer population at roughly 140,000–150,000 and said the department seeks to harvest about 20% of that population in a typical year. He also described season extensions and policy changes that will add hunting days and new implement allowances in coming seasons.

On funding, Batchelder said the department is not fully supported by licensing revenue: "We're a — we're a third funded by license sales," he told the committee, and presenters discussed an approximate funding mix that includes general funds, fee revenue and federal funds.

Members and presenters flagged operational limits that constrain scaling programs, particularly meat-processing capacity for distributing salvage meat statewide. The department said it is reviewing hatchery operations, which produce about 190,000 pounds of catchable-size trout, salmon and walleye, and exploring whether to restructure some facilities because of cost.

The witness panel offered to return with more detail and named researchers who could provide deeper analyses of predator–prey and replacement-cost work. The committee moved on after closing the Fish & Wildlife panel.