When Mike Budzik resigned recently from his post as the primary adviser to Gov. John Kasich on matters involving wildlife management along with hunting, fishing, and conservation issues, the former chief of the Division of Wildlife did not submit a few laudatory sentences, then ride off into the hill country.

And there wasn’t a shred of blah-blah-blah in his resignation letter.

Budzik took 1,182 words to lay out for the governor a full clip of critical points, detailed in a sometimes scathing rebuke of the upper management of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

RELATED CONTENT: Resignation letter of Mike Budzik

Budzik reminded the governor that his two most-recent requests to speak with Kasich about vital matters “didn’t even get a response,” and added Kasich and his staff “became silent and indifferent to the issues of importance to the sportsmen and women of Ohio” after that same large and politically active coalition had been ardent supporters of the governor for more than six years.

That’s no shot over the bow — that is a broadside cannon volley.

Budzik outlined three issues of extreme importance he feels have been tossed aside by the ODNR leadership: A “much needed [hunting and fishing] license fee increase,” the potential acquisition of the vast AEP ReCreation Land property, and the potential plan to convert the state’s wildlife officers into DNR officers with myriad other duties.

He called the need and support of acquiring the AEP tract — up to 60,000 acres of hunting, fishing, camping, and other outdoors opportunities on former strip mine lands — “overwhelming,” and said the necessity of the license fee hike is “indisputable,” while adding that Ohio sportsmen strongly oppose any watering down the role of wildlife officers. Budzik said that since November, his efforts on behalf of sportsmen and wildlife had been “rebuffed and cast aside.” 

Budzik, a vintage straight shooter with an impeccable reputation in the outdoors community, also bristled over the actions of ODNR officials, who he charged had “confronted, intimidated, and outright lied to” leaders of sportsmen organizations at public meetings, and added that one administration official had referred to some members of national conservation organizations as “cult” members. 

He went on to state, as numerous employees inside the Division of Wildlife have quietly claimed, that this critical wing of the ODNR is “slowly being financially starved.”

If a disgruntled former employee throws a few verbal darts at the boss on the way out the door, that is one thing, but when a highly respected former chief of the wildlife division tells the state’s top office holder that this division is being purposely allowed to wither on the vine, that is the shot heard ’round the outdoors world in Ohio.

Something — or more likely multiple things — appear to be awry in the ODNR, and it is well past time for the director, James Zehringer, to face the peasantry before they pass out the torches and pitchforks. The magic word here is transparency.

When Gary Obermiller, one of Zehringer’s top lieutenants at ODNR, spoke with a group of outdoors journalists a month or so ago, the writers and others raised concerns about the department not heeding the call by conservation and sportsmen’s organizations to increase resident fishing and hunting license fees, which hadn’t budged in more than a decade, to help put the Division of Wildlife on better financial footing.

In a sometimes contentious exchange, Obermiller seemed to brush off the fears of many in the field that the Division of Wildlife is being intentionally drained of its lifeblood in an effort to eventually declare it insoluble and swallow it up inside a homogenized ODNR. He objected to the suggestion there had been a de facto gag order in place at wildlife, but after it became apparent there were talking points passed down on the license fee issue and no one was to dare waver from those, that sounds an awful lot like a gag.

After more than two dozen state and national sportsmen and conservation groups, plus six of the Division of Wildlife’s immediate past living chiefs, strongly urged the ODNR to push for modest resident license fee increases, their calls were essentially ignored, and questions about the possible role change for wildlife officers were scoffed at. 

These issues did not appear out of a vacuum, but it was as if  the ODNR top brass have been saying: “nothing to see here, now move along.” But the air needs cleared, the curtain needs pulled back, and Budzik’s words deserve a public response.

ODNR officials have admitted that the Division of Wildlife has a number of vacant wildlife officer posts — including the one in Cuyahoga County where it was recently learned that most of the activity of a huge poaching ring had taken place. Hancock, Paulding, Crawford, and Tuscarawas are also reportedly without an assigned wildlife officer, and the Lake Erie unit is down a couple positions.

These apparent gaping holes in the enforcement web do not sit well with the hunters and anglers of the state, who are concerned about the plundering of our wildlife by poachers, both on the land and out on the lake.

Late word from the formerly smoke-filled room in Columbus and the sausage-making surrounding the state budget will likely rankle and agitate the orange-hat crowd even further, since it appears the proposed hike in out-of-state license fees has been seriously diluted, and someone slipped in a provision to give landowning non-residents the privilege of resident hunting and fishing status.

What Budzik’s resignation letter does is make it abundantly clear that the oft-mentioned concerns about the culture inside the ODNR are not the hallucinations of a bunch of old outdoors writers. What we have been hearing is no lone voice howling in the wilderness, but instead a rising chorus from the heart of the department’s constituency.

The state holds periodic summits to answer the public’s questions about its deer management approach, and now it is time for a round of town hall meetings where Director Zehringer and his staff meet the stockholders, lay out the agenda, explain their stance on the license issue, and assure everyone that the Division of Wildlife will be allowed to thrive as a separate entity. 

If everyone — the past chiefs, the numerous conservation organizations, the charter boat association, etc. — is wrong about all of this, then tell us so.

Budzik’s resignation letter indicates it is time for the ODNR to put its house in order and meet with those pesky, annoying taxpayers. We will host the first town hall session right here in northwest Ohio.

Contact Blade outdoors editor Matt Markey at: mmarkey@theblade.com or 419-724-6068.

First Published June 25, 2017, 4:31 a.m.