This effects us all and here is your opportunity to voice your opinions. You can read the amendments to find out how they may possibly change and check to see when the board will be meeting near you to join in and let your own voice be heard on the matters at hand.

The Board of Game and Inland Fisheries makes the great majority of all amendments to wildlife, fisheries, and boating regulations through a periodic regulation review process. Individual regulatory matters, if they are deemed to require action between full regulation review processes, may be acted on individually at other times.

Effective in 2005, changes to the DGIF periodic regulation review and amendment process have been made. The two primary purposes of the changes are:

To significantly expand public involvement in regulatory issues before either staff recommendations or Board proposals are made.
To increase administrative efficiency by consolidating two alternating periodic regulation review cycles into a single one.
The primary changes to the DGIF regulation review and amendment process are:

All regulations are reviewed in a single process conducted periodically. The duration of the review cycle may be once every two, three years, or other time period to be designated by the Board.

A period designated for expanded public discussion about regulation issues, before department staff makes recommendations or the Board proposes regulation amendments, has been added.

More time is provided between final adoption and the effective date of regulations, allowing more thorough editing and proofing, and wider public dissemination, of the amended regulations.

Fewer total Board meetings are devoted to periodic regulation reviews: three Board meetings per every cycle (of two, three, or other term of years), versus four Board meetings every two years under the prior review process.
All DGIF regulations are subject to review.

Regulation Issues

The development of "Regulation Issues" is a new aspect of the process. These are topical categories, identified by the public, department staff, or both, offered as a framework to facilitate public discussion of regulatory matters administered by the Board and the department. Regulation Issues in most cases are broadly stated, although some issues may necessitate a more narrow focus.

Regulation Issues are active elements in the DGIF periodic regulation review and amendment process between the time of the first, "Regulation Issues" Board meeting in March, and the second, "Regulation Proposal" Board meeting in August. Department staff and the Board use the results of the public discussion of Regulation Issues to develop, respectively, Staff Recommendations, and Board Proposals. At the second Board meeting, Regulation Issues are supplanted in the process by Staff Recommendations and Board Proposals. During the time period they are in use, Regulation Issues are dynamic and may be amended, or added to, or removed from consideration at any point, as deemed appropriate.

http://www.dgif.virginia.gov/regulations/review_process.html