Commission approves $505,000 in recreation amenities at Wilhelmina, Wildcat Shoals

LITTLE ROCK — Commissioners with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission Wednesday approved two budget transfers worth more than a half-million dollars to improve fishing access and amenities at two popular fishing destinations in The Natural State. Today’s meeting was held as a hybrid virtual meeting due to the hazardous driving conditions brought on by Tuesday’s winter storm.

The first budget transfer approval was to increase the work at Lake Wilhelmina, which is undergoing infrastructure repairs and habitat improvements. The access improvement portion of the project already was budgeted for $250,000, but the Operations and Fisheries divisions of the AGFC found additional opportunities to improve the fishing experience at Lake Wilhelmina. The Commission approved a budget increase of $350,000 from previously committed Marine Fuel Tax funds to perform the following additional access improvements:

• 1,200-square-foot covered fishing pier

• A 40-foot-wide staging area and turn around built onto the existing boat ramp.

• An 8-foot-by-20-foot courtesy dock

• A new concrete sidewalk from the boat ramp to the new courtesy dock

• New parking areas for an additional 13 trucks with trailers and 16 passenger vehicles

• Improvements to the existing roads into the parking areas

The second budget transfer focused on improving amenities for trout anglers on the White River. The Commission unanimously voted to transfer $155,000 from funds derived through the 2019 price increase of Arkansas trout stamps to construct bathroom facilities at Wildcat Shoals, a popular access on the river. This follows the continued efforts of the Commission to use the money from the trout stamp price increase toward trout management and amenities for trout anglers. Completing the Jim Hinkle Spring River State Fish Hatchery was the first project targeted by these funds.

Commissioners also heard the first reading of four proposed regulation changes for the 2025-26 hunting seasons.

The first proposal was to reinstate the 10-day cooldown period following the complete removal of bait before an area is again legal to turkey hunt. This regulation was previously in place, but was inadvertently left out of the turkey code during last May’s revisions.

“It was never intended to be removed during the simplification process, so we want to get this placed back in the code before turkey season begins,” AGFC Deputy Director Brad Carner said.

The Commission also heard the first reading of three regulation changes concerning chronic wasting disease management in Arkansas. The first is to add Conway County to the CWD Management Zone as a Tier 2 county. This follows the detection of CWD in the county during the 2024-25 deer season.

“We had one positive show up during the Alternative Firearms Hunt at Ed Gordon Point Remove Wildlife Management Area, and a subsequent positive deer just north of Ed Gordon confirmed later in the year,” Carner said. “Adding Conway County is in accordance with our current CWD management plan.”

Ed Gordon Point Remove WMA, Cove Creek Natural Area WMA and Lake Overcup WMA in Conway County and Norfork Lake WMA in Baxter County will be added to the list of WMAs using CWD management regulations if the regulation change passes. This will remove all antler-point restrictions on buck harvest and allow button bucks to be considered antlerless deer in regard to harvest. The requirement to harvest a doe before being eligible to harvest a buck at Ed Gordon Point Remove WMA also would be dropped.

The final CWD-related regulation change being proposed is to once again allow hunters to use products containing natural deer urine. According to AGFC Chief of Research Cory Gray, the initial banning of natural deer urine following the 2016 detection of CWD in Arkansas was a safeguard based on the best science available at that time and was an effort to prevent possible new introductions of CWD through natural bodily fluids of deer that could not be confirmed to be CWD-free. Further studies since that time have shown urine to be a low-risk item to introduce to the environment.

“It’s not a ‘zero risk’ item,” Gray said. “But the risk is low, especially compared to other bodily fluids and parts of cervids, and given what we believe to be relatively low popularity of these products with Arkansas hunters. This regulation was placing our wardens in a situation they could not enforce, determining whether the source of the urine being used was synthetic or natural. This regulation will help simplify things and let those hunters who use such products take advantage of them.”

Commissioners are expected to vote on these proposals at their regularly scheduled meeting in March.

Commissioners also heard from Marcelo Jorge and Heather Gaya, two researchers with the University of Georgia at Athens who have been studying the effects of CWD on deer populations in north Arkansas. According to preliminary data from field research conducted during the last four-and-a-half years, the study area saw an annual population decline of roughly 14 percent, and the mortality rates of adult deer were much higher in study animals with CWD than those that had no CWD detected.

One silver lining, according to Jorge, was that initial fawn survival did not appear to be negatively impacted by CWD being present in the adult doe. Fawns dropped by does known to be CWD positive survived through their first 180 days as well as fawns from does that did not test positive for CWD. However, with decreasing adult does in the population, overall reproduction still saw a continued negative trend.

AGFC Large Rivers Biologist Chelsea Gilliland presented an update on the Arkansas River Fishery Management Plan, a strategic, priority-based effort focused on management of the fisheries resource surrounding the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System. According to Gilliland, the approach for the plan has followed the same format as the recently revised Reservoir Black Bass Management Plan and Trout Management Plan in the Fisheries Division.

“All of these plans have incorporated a substantial amount of public input from stakeholders who use these resources,” Gilliland said. “The Arkansas River supports a nearly $23 billion national impact through commercial and recreational purposes, so it is a very complex system. The project is primarily focused on commercial traffic and power generation, and is not authorized for recreational benefits, but recreation benefits ancillary to their primary use can be realized.”

Gilliland said the fishery management plan being developed incorporated a user survey with 558 respondents from a randomly selected pool of anglers and other stakeholders who live near and depend upon the Arkansas River. The AGFC also hosted meetings with a stakeholder advisory committee to inform the writing team about the priorities and common goals of a wide range of users.

“We were able to identify six key areas to address in the plan — access and facilities; habitat; fisheries management; promoting fishing; communication, education and outreach; and aquatic nuisance species,” Gilliland said. “We’ve now taken these larger goals and formed our technical advisory committee to come up with objectives and strategies to address the overall goals that have been created.”

Gilliland hopes to have a published plan within the next two months, pending approval of the objectives and strategies being finalized by the technical advisory committee. This plan will guide management efforts on the Arkansas River for the next 10 years.

In other business, the Commission:

• Approved a donation of a boat, trailer and motor that were being retired from inventory to the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff to help UAPB’s field research needs.

• Approved the removal of two inventory items, a 27-year-old boat motor and a 24-year-old telemetry receiver. Both of these items had been lost despite the best efforts to locate them. Both items were obsolete and had a net book value of $0.

• Approved the removal of the service sidearm issued to former Commissioner Bennie Westphal, who served on the Commission from 2020 to 2022 to complete the term of Commissioner Joe Morgan, who died during his appointment.

• Awarded retiring game warden Cpl. Travis Thorne his service sidearm for 17 years of service to the AGFC.

• Awarded retiring game warden Senior Cpl. Brian Austin his service sidearm for 27 years of service to the AGFC.

• Awarded retiring game warden Cpl. Steve Davis his service sidearm for 19 years of service to the AGFC.

Videos of today’s complete meeting are available at the AGFC’s YouTube channel.

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CUTLINES:

LAKE WILHELMINA
The AGFC approved a $350,000 budget transfer of Marine Fuel Tax funds to create additional amenities at Lake Wilhelmina during its renovation.

COLLARED DEER
Commissioners heard preliminary results of a 5-year study on the effects of CWD on Arkansas’s deer herd.

ARKANSAS RIVER PLAN SLIDE
AGFC Large Rivers Biologist Chelsea Gilliland gave an update on the creation of a new Arkansas River Fishery Management Plan at today’s Commission Meeting.