Greetings,
This email campaign is in cooperation with Finsylvania and the Pennsylvania Wild Trout Coalition.
Thanks to everyone who stepped up this winter and sent emails on behalf of stocking reform. The Finsylvania Podcast is growing fast, and organizing this kind of grassroots advocacy for conservation is exactly why I created it! Every few months, we use our growing collective voice to send a coordinated wave of emails to politicians, state agencies, and the media to shed light on the major failures and the need for change at PFBC (PA Fish & Boat).
Right now, it is crucial to take action and be engaged as an angler or conservationist. Pennsylvania’s public fishing opportunities and aquatic ecosystem health are facing accelerating longterm declines that have been ignored. Public stream access has been rapidly disappearing due to private land posting, while wealthy profiteers are leasing out and stocking waterways for exclusive, expensive private use. At the same time, costly state-stocking programs are draining taxpayer infrastructure grant funds and damaging healthy ecosystems. Without urgent grassroots action, everyday anglers will lose affordable fishing opportunities, already rampant stream crowding will intensify, and PA will face a severe loss of its native brook trout and aquatic biodiversity.
Take action now for the future of conservation and our sport by participating in this email campaign!
AFTER YOU SEND YOUR E-MAIL CALL POLITICIANS ‘ JOURNALISTS TOO!!!
Here are phone numbers to call and advocate for stocking reform!
Politicians
Call Josh Shapiro
717-787-2500
Call Greg Rothman’s office(Chair of senate game and fish committee)
7177871377
Find your state senator/representative’s office
https://www.palegis.us/find-my-legislator
Media
Statewide & Investigative
Spotlight PA (Statewide Capital/Investigative): (717) 418-9684
Pennsylvania Cable Network (PCN): (717) 730-6000
Harrisburg & Central PA
PennLive / Patriot-News (Harrisburg): (717) 255-8100
WGAL Channel 8 (Lancaster/Harrisburg NBC): (717) 393-5300
ABC27 WHTM (Harrisburg ABC): (717) 745-3413
CBS21 WHP (Harrisburg CBS): (717) 238-2100
Fox43 WPMT (York/Harrisburg Fox): (717) 843-0043
LNP / LancasterOnline: (717) 291-8811
Pittsburgh & Western PA
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: (412) 263-1601
TribLIVE / Tribune-Review: (724) 834-1151
KDKA Channel 2 (Pittsburgh CBS): (412) 575-2245
WTAE Channel 4 (Pittsburgh ABC): (412) 244-4444
WPXI Channel 11 (Pittsburgh NBC): (412) 237-1100
Philadelphia & Eastern PA
The Philadelphia Inquirer: (215) 854-4500
6ABC WPVI (Philadelphia ABC): (215) 878-9700
CBS News Philadelphia / KYW: (215) 977-5333 (Direct Tip Line)
NBC10 WCAU (Philadelphia NBC): (610) 668-5555
Fox 29 WTXF (Philadelphia Fox): (215) 982-5500
The Morning Call (Allentown/Lehigh Valley): (610) 820-6500
Northeast & Northwest PA
WNEP Channel 16 (Scranton/Wilkes-Barre ABC): (570) 344-1616
The Times-Tribune (Scranton): (570) 348-9100
Erie Times-News: (814) 870-1600
WJET Channel 24 (Erie ABC): (814) 864-2400
FIND THESE POLITICIANS AND JOURNALISTS ON SOCIAL MEDIA AND ADVOCATE THERE TOO!!!
These are the big points to include in any messages to politicians or the media:
1. Financial waste and reckless spending: This includes $100 million in taxpayer infrastructure grant dollars used to bail out hatcheries. A 2017 PSU Business School analysis stated that hatchery cuts were unavoidable; instead of making these cuts, we are draining the taxpayers.
2. Ecological damage: The current system causes ecological damage to native brook trout and hellbenders, while decreasing the quality of wild trout fishing.
3. The stream access crisis: This is the direct opportunity cost of hatcheries stealing stream access easement money for decades.
4. Waste, fraud, and abuse: Executive Director Tim Schaeffer and his crony commissioners must be REMOVED, and brave whistleblowers like Eric Hussar must be protected from retaliation. Abuses include self-dealing to private businesses using commission resources, sweetheart stocking exemptions for wealthy, for-profit trout clubs, and shadow governance by Tim Schaeffer, who stripped all public meeting recordings from YouTube.
5. The danger of a Fish/Game commission merger: It would be a massive mistake to view a Fish & Boat / Game Commission merger as anything more than yet another hatchery bailout(license fee increases, $100 million tax payer grant dollars, senate bill 800, and now this). The money to bail out hatcheries would come from the Game Commission’s oil and gas revenues—funds that are supposed to buy public land in the form of State Game Lands for hunting and fishing. We need to fix the PFBC, not find it a Game Commission “sugar daddy” to continue its reckless spending and reduce public land purchasing ability as a result.
6. We need a stocking authorization immediately: The PFBC had to watch helplessly while numerous invasive species—including Australian Barramundi and algae eaters—were stocked in PA waters because the commission chose not to have the power to approve or deny private stockings.
