Public Act 093-0837
 
SB2156 Enrolled LRB093 15050 RAS 40632 b

    AN ACT concerning wildlife.
 
    Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois,
represented in the General Assembly:
 
    Section 1. Short title. This Act may be cited as the
Illinois Hunting Heritage Protection Act.
 
    Section 5. Findings. The General Assembly finds the
following:
        (1) Recreational hunting is an important and
    traditional recreational activity in which 14,000,000
    Americans 16 years of age and older participate.
        (2) Hunters have been and continue to be among the
    foremost supporters of sound wildlife management and
    conservation practices in the United States.
        (3) Persons who hunt and organizations related to
    hunting provide direct assistance to wildlife managers and
    enforcement officers of federal, state, and local
    governments.
        (4) Purchases of hunting licenses, permits, and stamps
    and payment of excise taxes on goods used by hunters have
    generated billions of dollars for wildlife conservation,
    research, and management.
        (5) Recreational hunting is an essential component of
    effective wildlife management, in that it is an important
    tool for reducing conflicts between people and wildlife and
    provides incentives for the conservation of wildlife,
    habitats, and ecosystems on which wildlife depend.
        (6) Recreational hunting is an environmentally
    acceptable activity that occurs and can be provided for on
    State public lands without adverse effects on other uses of
    that land.
 
    Section 10. Definitions. For the purposes of this Act:
    "Department" means the Department of Natural Resources.
    "Department-managed lands" means those lands that the
Department owns or those lands of which the Department holds
management authority.
    "Director" means the Director of Natural Resources.
    "Hunting" means the lawful pursuit, trapping, shooting,
capture, collection, or killing of wildlife or the attempt to
pursue, trap, shoot, capture, collect, or kill wildlife.
 
    Section 15. Recreational hunting.    
    (a) Subject to valid existing rights, Department-managed
lands shall be open to access and use for recreational hunting
except as limited by the Department for reasons of public
safety, fish or wildlife management, or homeland security or as
otherwise limited by law.
    (b) The Department shall exercise its authority,
consistent with subsection (a), in a manner to support,
promote, and enhance recreational hunting opportunities, to
the extent authorized by State law. The Department is not
required to give preference to hunting over other uses of
Department-managed lands or over land or water management
priorities established by Department regulations or State law.
    (c) Department land management decisions and actions may
not, to the greatest practical extent, result in any net loss
of land acreage available for hunting opportunities on
Department-managed lands that exists on the effective date of
this Act.
    (d) By October 1 of each year, the Director shall submit to
the General Assembly a written report describing:
        (1) the acreage administered by the Department that has
    been closed during the previous year to recreational
    hunting and the reasons for the closures; and
        (2) the acreage administered by the Department that, in
    order to comply with subsection (c), was opened to
    recreational hunting to compensate for those acreage
    closed under paragraph (1).

Effective Date: 1/1/2005