North Dakota

North Dakota Outdoors is a weekly news feature now in its 15th year of broadcast on nearly every commercial television station in North Dakota. It allows nearly 200,000 viewers a chance to peek behind the curtain and learn a little more about the interior workings of the North Dakota Game and Fish Department, as well as highlighting outdoor and conservation issues, people and places around the state. The video team of writer/director Tom Jensen and videographer/editor Mike Anderson have won several national awards from the Association for Conservation Information.

Outdoors Online Weekly Webcast

Outdoors Online is a weekly webcast produced by the North Dakota Game and Fish Department. Each week, host Tom Jensen, a former television news anchor, visits with agency personnel or other wildlife professionals who make the decisions that affect hunters, anglers, or anyone who has a love of the outdoors. The weekly format provides for fresh and topical issues, and Jensen's laid-back style makes for a relaxed, easy to understand conversation. Outdoors Online tackles subjects that are informative, sometimes controversial, but always interesting. New programs are posted every Thursday.

About the North Dakota Game and Fish Department

In its first year of official existence, the North Dakota Game and Fish Department sold 16,000 fishing licenses and 34,000 small game hunting licenses. In the decades that followed, Game and Fish added trained biologists and wildlife and fisheries managers who were pioneers in the scientific wildlife management field. They set up wildlife population surveys that led to biologically sound hunting seasons. They planted trees and worked to educate citizens about the need for conserving habitat.

In recent years, North Dakota has sold around 160,000 fishing licenses and well over 100,000 hunting licenses. Many game populations today are at or near all-time high levels and others have rebounded from historic lows at some point in the last century.

The challenge for the future is for Game and Fish Department wildlife and fisheries biologists, habitat managers, game wardens, education and communications specialists and administrative staff, to maintain the habitat in the state's lakes, rivers, prairies and woodlands that allows wildlife populations to build and thrive. It's a challenge and a responsibility that agency staff take very seriously.

North Dakota Game and Fish Mission Statement

The mission of the North Dakota Game and Fish Department is to protect, conserve and enhance fish and wildlife populations and their habitats for sustained public consumptive and noncomsumptive use.