Anglers were treated to double the fun on Montour Run this spring when the stocked portion of the Ohio River tributary was increased from one to two miles.

Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission biologist Rick Lorson said Montour Run never would have been a candidate for stocking if the Forest Grove Sportsmen's Association and the Montour Run Watershed Association hadn't helped to limit mine drainage, airport runoff and dumpster-loads of trash for the past 15 years.

"We were once told this stream would never hold fish, and we proved everyone wrong," said Forest Grove board member Mike Karkalla. His group stocked trout before the state would take a gamble.

"We used their original stocking as part of our fish survival survey before deciding to stock," Lorson said. "Many partners have made this a viable fishery."

Private sector "cooperators," as state game and fisheries managers often call them, are proliferating across Pennsylvania. With no tax dollars going to the Fish and Boat and Game commissions, and license sales dwindling, state wildlife managers are looking to sportsmen, conservationists, even corporations, to shoulder more of the burden of caring for fish and game habitat.

Duquesne Light donated light poles for restoration of a launch facility on the Allegheny River in Sharpsburg that also included contributions from Job Corps and other partners. Consol Energy is working on bobwhite quail propagation on 1,700 acres in Greene County. Wild Waterways Conservation, a nonprofit steward of the Connoquenessing and Slippery Rock watersheds, donated a 10-acre tract of land adjacent to Moraine State Park to enhance green space and aid groundwater recharge. The Somerset-Cambria Water Authority is enabling the Jennerstown Rod and Gun Club to cultivate small game habitat around Quemahoning Reservoir.

"We've long partnered with sportsmen's clubs in terms of hunter-trapper education and getting folks into hunting. But in terms of land acquisition and habitat improvement, that's a more recent phenomenon," said Pennsylvania Game Commission spokesman Jerry Feaser. "It's growing so fast I couldn't even give you an exhaustive list because, for every national organization out there, there are active local chapters, plus rod and gun clubs and other groups."

The Game Commission has tripled its habitat management staff to work with private sector partners.

"For every dollar we put up, they're putting up money as well. They provide physical labor," said Feaser. "And they can purchase things expeditiously that would be a more [time-consuming] process for us."

The Fish and Boat Commission also is reporting an explosion in public-private ventures. Two years ago, the agency created a habitat bureau specifically aimed at outreach.

"We're too small to work without cooperators," said agency biologist Dave Kristine, who currently manages 100 dam removal projects across the state, mostly with individual landowners. "Part of it is that, in recent years, the public's knowledge of ecosystems has kicked in. That, and Growing Greener funding is available."

Although millions of Growing Greener dollars are distributed for hundreds of land and waterway improvements statewide, many more needs depend on revenues from stagnating fish and game license sales. That can hamper the most dynamic partnerships. Pheasants Forever and California University of Pennsylvania are prepared to take their pheasant propagation program at Pike Run statewide, but it may hinge on whether the Game Commission gets a license fee increase.

"It isn't enough for us just to get more birds from South Dakota," said Rich Kovacic, president of the Tri-County chapter of Pheasants Forever. "We need the Game Commission to put money into habitat. We finally got them to provide a habitat plan; now we need the funding."

Partnerships also can change with organizations' priorities. Pennsylvania Trout Unlimited decided recently to limit its involvement in the Fish Commission's cooperative hatchery program, which provides groups with trout to raise in net pens and other types of nurseries.

"We're not going to put any more money into new fish culture operations," said PATU president Ken Undercoffer. "We're a conservation group. Hatching trout is a mission we no longer want to be on."