Newly Established Wildlife Management Area Named in Honor of Late AGFC Director

WYNNE — The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission unanimously approved the official name of the state’s latest wildlife management area as Pat Fitts Oakwood WMA at its monthly meeting held Wednesday at the Bill Thomas Wynne Economic Development Commission Building and Technology Center in Cross County.

Pat Fitts Oakwood WMA was added to the AGFC’s hunting opportunities earlier this year, thanks to a land trade between the agency and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The USFWS previously owned the land known as the Oakwood Unit, but without a public right-of-way to the property, public hunting wasn’t allowed. Fitts worked diligently during his time as AGFC director to work out the details in opening this 2,206-acre area to the public.

Fitts’ steadfast commitment to conservation and the people of Arkansas was evident throughout his 32-year career with the agency. He was a calming influence throughout one of the agency’s and the country’s most trying times — the COVID-19 pandemic. In the face of a world shutting down, Fitts led the AGFC to the completion of the J.B. and Johnelle Hunt Family Nature Center in Springdale and led the charge to begin renovation of the Joe Hogan State Fish Hatchery in Lonoke, the AGFC’s oldest and largest fish hatchery. Oakwood was one of the last initiatives Fitts worked on before his retirement in 2021.

“It has taken five years to complete the work Fitts started, but thanks to his vision and work, Arkansans have a new WMA in an area of the state where public access is getting harder to implement at this scale,” AGFC Deputy Director Brad Carner said. [LINK TO PRESENTATION]

The Commission also approved a budget increase of $5.1 million for the agency’s Private Lands Habitat Division to fund habitat improvements and public hunting opportunities on private land. The money for this increase comes from a combination of governor’s set-aside restricted reserve funds and a recently awarded Voluntary Public Access Grant from the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

“Five million dollars of this increase comes from Gov. Sarah Sanders’ set-aside that was approved by the General Assembly to fund our Conservation Incentive Program,” Garrick Dugger, chief of the AGFC’s Private Lands Habitat Division, said. “In addition to funding eight different habitat management practices for qualifying landowners, we’re going to use $3 million of this set-aside as a cash match for another proposed grant that, if awarded, could bring an additional $10 million to be used to fund CIP in the future. I can’t thank Gov. Sanders and the state Legislature enough for their confidence in us to support wildlife habitat conservation on private lands in Arkansas.”

The remaining $100,000 of the budget increase will complete the implementation of this year’s Waterfowl Rice Incentive Conservation Enhancement Program. The WRICE program not only offers financial incentives for rice producers to forgo fall tilling of their fields and flood that acreage for waterfowl habitat, but also opens these enrolled rice fields to limited public access through draw hunts conducted during duck season.

“The money for this program comes from the recent $2.1 million Voluntary Public Access Grant awarded to the AGFC to be used in the next three years,” Dugger said. “Thanks to this grant, we’ll be able to continue this program that helps keep flooded rice on the landscape at a time when flooded winter acreage is facing a sharp downturn. We’ve lost nearly a third of last year’s rice acreage to other crops this year due to economic drivers making it very difficult for rice farmers to make a profit on their crops. This, plus the ongoing drought, makes every flooded acre of open fields critical to winter waterfowl habitat.” [LINK TO PRESENTATION]

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