ATLANTA — There is much more to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources that meets the eye.

That is the case made by agency’s chief during Effingham Day at the Capitol on Jan. 28.

“... Most people associate DNR with the badge and the gun — the game wardens,” DNR Commissioner Mark Williams said. “They are only about 210 of our 2,200 employees.”

DNR has five divisions — Law Enforcement; Parks, Recreation and Historic Sites; Coastal Resources; Wildlife Resources; Preservation; and Environmental Protection.

“Our game wardens enforce the game laws that our legislature passes,” Williams said. “ ... Most everybody knows what a game warden does in their county because they are very visible. “They speak at Rotary clubs and go into our schools to talk to kids.

“... Obviously, they help us on our WMAs (Wildlife Management Areas) and patrol our state parks and historic sites.”

The Parks, Recreation and Historic Sites Division is DNR’s second largest.

“We have fifty state parks,” Williams said. “They go all the way up to Cloudland Canyon (in Rising Fawn) to Stephen C. Foster (in Fargo) — and every park is different. It just depends on what God gave us as a land feature, and we try to highlight that.

“At Cloudland Canyon, we do cave spelunking, disc golf and all the water fall watching that the mountains give us there. We highlight fishing at Stephen C. Foster. Our middle state parks have a lot of golf.”

Each park is operated like a business, Williams said.

“I’m proud to say, standing before you taxpayers, that our parks run about eighty percent self-sustainable,” he said. “We have some parks we have to help along and some that operate well above one hundred percent and it all balances out to about eighty.”

The Coastal Resources Division, housed on Hwy 17 at the bridge near Jekyll Island, has primary responsibility for managing Georgia’s marshes, beaches, and marine fishery resources. One-third of the salt marshes on the East Coast is in Georgia.

“The main thing they do is saltwater fish,” Williams said. “We are not in charge of snapper and sea bass. We manage the fishery from the shoreline to three miles out. Three to twelve is federal.

“We get a lot of questions about the snapper fishery and those things but we don’t set that limit. We do sea trout, croaker, redfish and those type things.”

Saltwater mammals also fall under the domain of the Coastal Resources Division.

“We have manatees in Georgia,” Williams said. “We just went through a big tagging program, so now we are keeping up with them. We manage the right whales when they are migrating.”

Williams said only 400 right whales remain.

“They’ve about harvested them to extinction,” he said.

The Coastal Resources Division is trying to help the state develop Georgia’s oyster production, Williams added.

The Wildlife Resources Division regulates hunting, fishing and the operation of watercraft in Georgia, protects non-game and endangered wildlife, and maintains public education to ensure that Georgia’s natural resources will be conserved for our present and future generations.

“Those are mostly my biologists,” Williams said. “You might mix them up with a game warden except the man or lady who gets out of the truck won’t have a badge and a gun on them. We have deer biologists, quail biologists and we have technicians.

“We manage over a million acres of land for public hunting and fishing. There are nine public fishing areas in the state and we operate 159 boat ramps throughout the state.

“Wildlife Resources is very busy. Their main job is to help you, the customer, have access to public lands to recreate on — to bird watch, to hunt and fish, and all those different things.”

The Wildlife Resources Division has three divisions of its own — fisheries, game and conservation It stocks one million trout in state waters each year.

“Ninety-five percent of the critters that run around in the woods of Georgia, we don’t hunt and fish,” Williams said, “but we are charged with managing those as well.”

DNR’s Historic Preservation Division only has 21 employees.

“They are the ones who decide if you (have property that) will be on the National Historic Register,” Williams said. “They do the tax credit program if you are remodeling a commercial building, your private home or if you are buying a historic home and redoing it. They give you the criteria that you have to follow to get federal and state tax credits.”

Williams lauded DNR employees for their work during state’s recent spate of natural disasters.

“Obviously, we work in the elements everyday,” he said. “We have four-wheel drive trucks and every ranger has a chain saw and ropes. During Hurricanes Irma, Matthew and Michael, down in southwest Georgia, the biologists, the game wardens and the park workers were trained to do what we do, which is mainly clearing roads for power companies and evacuee housing. During Irma, we had 12,000 evacuees in our state parks.

“I’m very proud of the work we do during a weather event.”