WDNR Accepts Violation Tips by Text Message
There's a new way for you to help protect Wisconsin's great outdoors. The Department of Natural Resources has added text-messaging as a way for citizens to report hunting, fishing, recreational vehicle, and environmental violations.
DNR Regional Warden Byron Goetsch sees many advantages with the new Text-a-Tip program.
He says texting is a common communication tool for many people today and it allows you to be discreet.
"It will give people the opportunity to provide information where they're in an environment where they really can't be talking," Goetsch noted. "I was thinking about, you're in a closed building or you're close to where the violation is taking place, it's not uncommon for people to be texting, so you could reach down, text the information and the person standing next to you probably won't know what you're doing."
It takes just seconds to text a tip to the DNR's violation hotline.
Here's how it works: You start a text on your phone and on the first line type in TIPWDNR. Add a space and type in the tip information.
You then send the text to 847411 (TIP411).
Within seconds, you receive confirmation hotline operators received your text message.
The service is confidential. Goetsch said, "We won't know where that, the origin of that phone number, so the confidentiality is even going to be heightened from what the current tip line is."
Wardens say the vast majority of violation cases are a result of citizen tips.
"We depend heavily on the eyes and ears of the public. Our budget our dwindling; we don't have the ability to get out there as much as we have in the past, so the tip line is more important than ever."
