Commission keeps conservation work on track
Sept. 15, 2022
LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas Game and Fish Commissioners at today’s meeting approved a $1 million budget transfer within the agency’s existing budget to complete the construction and installation of the Glaise Creek water-control structure on Henry Gray Hurricane Lake Wildlife Management Area to improve drainage and the capacity for sustainable bottomland hardwood forest management on the WMA.
AGFC offers additional opportunities for black bass angler input
Aug. 17, 2022
LITTLE ROCK – Last week, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission launched a series of public forums to give Arkansas’s bass anglers an opportunity to provide input on the state’s latest Reservoir Black Bass Management Plan. Five of the 11 open-house style forums planned have been held so far, but AGFC biologists are adding an online survey form to hook into feedback from anglers who can’t make a meeting.
New AGFC deputy director helps Batten down the leadership hatches
Aug. 3, 2022
LITTLE ROCK – Ben Batten belies the upper Midwest background that directed him on the path of outdoors and conservation work some 18 years ago. Rather, even with less of a Southern twang than most of his fellow Arkansas Game and Fish Commission employees possess, one still might mistake him for a native Arkansan in the way he seems to know every nook and cranny of this state, every fish in its waters, or the best spots to find deer, ducks and other “critters,” as he calls them.
AGFC to host open-house forums for bass angler input
July 27, 2022
LITTLE ROCK – Anglers interested in improving Arkansas’s bass fishing are invited to provide input on the state’s latest Reservoir Black Bass Management Plan at a series of open-house events the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission will hold in August and September. Eleven public forums will be held in locations throughout Arkansas to ensure anglers and other stakeholders from every corner of the state have an opportunity to review the current status of fisheries management, ask questions and provide input on the future of bass management in The Natural State.
Without access to trees, AGFC fisheries biologists build their own at Lake Hamilton for habitat
June 15, 2022
HOT SPRINGS – The sinking of trees cut from a lake’s nearby shoreline has become a popular Arkansas Game and Fish Commission method for boosting a fishery and helping the anglers using it, but some bodies of water like Lake Hamilton don’t offer the luxury of such handy habitat tools.
Olive takes helm of Arkansas fisheries
June 8, 2022
LITTLE ROCK — Jason Olive of El Dorado has been chosen to lead the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s efforts in fisheries management, hatchery production and aquatic conservation as chief of the agency’s Fisheries Division. Olive replaces former Fisheries Chief Ben Batten, who was promoted to AGFC deputy director at the May 19 Commission meeting in Little Rock.
Invasive carp removal teams begin work on White River
Oct. 20, 2021
HAZEN — With only a few days of training, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s newly formed invasive carp removal team has removed roughly 320 pounds of invasive carp from the White River in its first day of netting.