By Wyoming law, the Game & Fish Department recommends hunting and fishing license fees, and the Legislature actually sets the fees.

Because the revenue from license fees (which fund about 90 percent of the G&F budget) must carry the department for six years, the increases at face value can be nothing short of whopping. Try 40, 50 and 60 percent, all the way up to an increase of 117 percent for resident bighorn sheep.

For the most part, the G&F recommended license fees go to the Legislature as they were proposed. But there was one exception.

At least in round one, score a win for resident Wyoming fishermen.

That 63 percent increase for a resident fishing license would have raised an additional million dollars in annual license revenue to G&F if the same number of residents (72,000) purchased a fishing license at the higher price. The resident fishing license is the most popular license sold by Wyoming G&F, by the way.

The G&F proposal is to keep non-resident annual fishing licenses at $90, because there is a fear that the number of non-resident licenses sold (11,400) would go down if the price were increased.

The question becomes: Who are you trying to protect? It isn’t the resident fisherman.

I am willing to accept the reality of fee adjustments from time to time to maintain the level of services as the cost of those services moves ever higher. But in this case the cost should not fall so heavily on residents.

The TRW committee saw it the same way. The proposed price for a resident fishing license in the bill was reduced to $30, still a 36 percent increase from the present $22.

Next stop: the full Legislature.