The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission quietly announced that as of July 1, visitors to Wildlife Management Areas, or WMAs, will now need a permit to access those areas. They rolled out this permit with almost no public input and no transparency regarding the timeline.
The permit costs $10.50 annually, and the proceeds will be used to maintain WMAs in the offseason so that more folks can safely and happily enjoy the Natural State. It’s worth pointing out that while the list of WMAs does include some of Arkansas’s most popular areas, these permit-required WMAs make up only 385,000 acres of land, compared to the 3 million acres of national forest land that Arkansans can visit for free.
Our issue isn’t necessarily with the permit itself. While even the small sum will make it harder for folks to enjoy some of these outdoor spaces, the Game and Fish Commission gets limited conservation funding from the state and has to make up funds from somewhere. In other words, they don’t get much of our tax dollars. Hunters and fisherfolk already pay for licenses, and in the interest of fairness, it doesn’t seem unreasonable for other Arkansans to chip in to maintain the gorgeous spaces that give our state its name.
Our issue, as it so often is with this administration, is the complete lack of transparency surrounding both the decision and its rollout. Arkansans understand that maintaining our natural spaces requires money. With more natural tourists than ever — the state’s seven National Park Service properties attracted more than 4.2 million recreation visits in 2025 — it’s important to have the funds to minimize those impacts. Trails require a surprising amount of maintenance. Even a low-impact visit like a simple hike is still an impact.
So why wouldn’t the Game and Fish Commission be up front with Arkansans? It was buried in a legal notice with hundreds of other regulation and rule changes back in March, but Randy Zellers, a Commission spokesperson, told the Arkansas Times that the decision was “a few years in the making.” Why are we just now finding out about it? What was the decision process like?
We don’t know, because the state won’t tell us. This administration is completely allergic to transparency and public participation. It doesn’t trust its own citizens to understand the policies that affect their lives. We think Arkansans can handle a $10.50 permit, if only we’d had the opportunity to discuss it with our officials and proper notice before the changes went into effect.
