Well, to go back to funding, yes, we raise all of our own funds. Funding is a bigger challenge every day for all non-profits and charitable organizations, in that we're competing for the same dollar market. As government makes cutbacks, our funding is reduced.
Sponsorship funding is the biggest thing that has hit us recently. If we need project money, we can go out and lobby one of the big companies. Usually we can generate enough of a case that we can get support, but getting the daily operating funding is very difficult.
On the education front, we typically run 30 to 40 tours a year. We do tourism from outside the area. We do schools. My tours program covers everything from day care kids to the old folks homes. When seniors come into the hatchery and recount their youth and their experiences with fishing, it's one of the most enjoyable things I have to do. It makes my job worthwhile.
I look at this education component when I go back to the kids. If we don't have fish and a fish community for the kids to work with, they're all going to be techno geeks, and we have so much of that now. To get the kids involved in the outdoors, our fish community has to be there. We run an open house every year for the hatchery. We had one just three weeks ago. We had over 2,000 people come through on two days. This is one of our major public education programs.
We run a kids' day at the end of May. Usually we have 150 booked in throughout the day, and every one of those kids will catch a rainbow trout before they leave. We have a stocked pond. They get to know how sport fish react.
If we don't stop things from coming into our Great Lakes, we will not have a sport fishery. The Asian carp is another addition. It's going to attack the existing spawning grounds. The grass carp will rip up the spawning beds we have. The existing habitat keeps disappearing. The zebra mussel has cleared so much water.... Where do the fish hide? We have the cormorant. When it can see the fish, it attacks the fish.
We've done nothing to stop these invasives from coming in. The majority have come in aboard the ocean carriers. Yes, we have started ballast water regulations, but what about the hull? Zebra mussels will come in on the hull of a boat just as easy as the villager will come in on the boat. I've seen the effects of the zebra mussel.
When I was a kid and fished, we could always catch fish. The kids don't have that opportunity today.