Mark Taylor

Mark Taylor's Outdoors column and notebook appears regularly in The Roanoke Times.

Recent columns

• Complaining meaningless without action
• Waterfowl regulations announced
• Higher ammunition prices create shell shock

• Column archive

The Department of Game and Inland Fisheries is adjusting its approach to its hunting and trapping regulations review process.

The agency will compact the process into a roughly nine-month period as opposed to the current system that lasts for more than a year.

Regulations are typically changed every two years, but the shift means that regulations adopted this past fall will be in place for only one season before they again come up for review.

The regulations process will get under way in September with a series of 20 public meetings during which agency staffers will seek public input on suggested regulations changes. Next comes a scoping meeting in late October, during which the agency's staff will introduce to its board or directors the issues being considered.

After a public comment period, official proposals will be introduced at a board meeting in late February 2009. Public meetings will be held around the state prior to the board's taking final action on the proposals in early June 2009.

During comment periods, public input will also be accepted through Internet discussion forums, e-mail and traditional mail.

Any approved changes will take effect on Aug. 1, 2009. That's a month later than hunting and trapping rules have traditionally taken effect, but agency officials believe the timing is OK because the earliest hunting season typically do not open until early September.

Department leaders decided to revisit the regulations system because, among other concerns, they worried that the current system may have been limiting public participation. Citizens were able to comment on proposals by e-mail and through Internet forums, but if they wanted to personally discuss items they had to attend board meetings in Richmond because traditional meetings held around the state had been eliminated.

Other developments from Tuesday's board meeting:

• The board approved a change to muzzleloader hunting rules, eliminating the requirement that muzzleloader guns use only flintlock or percussion ignition systems. The change allows the use of muzzleloaders with electronic ignitions, a relatively new technology being used in some muzzleloaders.

• The board directed the agency to fund the repair of the dam that forms Laurel Bed Lake.

Agency officials had announced earlier this spring that they were draining the 300-acre lake because they had been unable to secure repair fund, which could reach $2 million.

Catch and release regulations for smallmouth bass, which had been lifted, are now back in place.

-- Mark Taylor