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Outdoors: Hard times hit Fish and Wildlife department
BOB MOTTRAM
The Tacoma News Tribune
June 18, 2003

Poor? The Department of Fish and Wildlife is so poor that it's got to boil suspenders for soup because it can't afford to buy a belt.

It's so poor that ... it's got to stop selling fishing and hunting licenses in its regional offices because it can't afford to pay for staff to issue them.

And that's pretty poor, considering that 16 to 18 percent of its annual operating budget derives from sales of such licenses.

Starting July 1, you'll have to buy your licenses online or by phone or from retail dealers at sporting goods stores or marinas.

Currently, the department employs "customer service specialists" to provide information to callers and visitors and to sell licenses at its headquarters in Olympia, in regional offices in six cities and in a district office in Wenatchee.

But no more. This agency is so poor that ... Fish and Wildlife Director Jeff Koenings and Deputy Director Larry Peck had to duck out of the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission's June meeting hours early to start planning immediately for the agency's reduction in force. They intend to reduce the 1,610-employee department by about 80 positions, including the customer-service ones, to meet a shortfall of $14.3 million in the agency's 2003-05 budget.

They couldn't remain for the rest of the meeting, Koenings said, because every day that these positions exist whacks another bunch of calories from the agency's suspender soup.

Now that's poor.

• Only 3 to 4 percent of state license sales take place in department offices now, by the way, the rest elsewhere. So the department figures the change won't be a significant inconvenience to the public.

• Dawn Reynolds of Pullman told her Fish and Wildlife Commission colleagues this month that she's been a member of the commission since 1999 and "it seems we're always addressing cougar issues."

Well, Ms. Reynolds, it seems that way to me, too. Maybe that's because you are.

Maybe it has something to do with the Washington voters who decided in 1996 to ban hunting of cougar with hounds. The move was the first in what may be a developing Washington tradition of managing wildlife through the initiative process. The initiative in this case, driven by a national animal-rights organization, worked so well that in 2000 Gov. Gary Locke felt compelled to sign a legislative bill to allow resumption of limited hound hunting. In spite of the partial resumption, cougars continue to take a toll of domestic animals and of the commission's time.

They did so again at the June meeting, where Sean Carrell of the Department of Fish and Wildlife's enforcement division said that in the three seasons since the department's public safety cougar removal program began, citizens hunting under it have killed 145 cats. The program provides for issuance of a quantity of special hound-hunting permits based on the number of cougar-human "contacts" in a given area in a given period.

Citizens or the department killed an additional 94 cats during the same period in direct defense of livestock or pets and 564 in recreational hunts without hounds.

Total cougar harvests dropped following implementation of the hound ban, then grew fairly steadily through the 2001-02 season as hunters adapted to the new restrictions. In 2002-03 they took a 34 percent plunge from the season before, however, to 213, despite the fact that sales of cougar tags had held steady at about 57,000.

Donny Martorello, the department's bear, cougar and special species manager, says he wasn't surprised.

"We've been hitting them pretty hard," he told the Fish and Wildlife Commission.

The number of citizen complaints about cougars to the department also has declined, which also is no surprise to Martorello, and the agency expects to issue fewer public safety cougar removal permits next season as a result.

It's also looking at some other possibilities, one of which is pursuit-only hunting with hounds, an idea that could be controversial. Managers already considered the idea at least once and then shelved it. In this case, Martorello said, such a season could help the department better estimate cougar populations through capture-recapture research and could help it determine whether pursuit seasons make cougars more wary of people and less likely to confront them.

• For some people in cougar country, however, it all seems too little too late.

Craig Vejraska is chairman of the Okanogan County Commission. He showed up at the June meeting to tell the Fish and Wildlife Commission his county's government has "been inundated with cougar complaints.

"It doesn't seem like this commission and the Department of Wildlife understand the danger," he said. "We're tired of paying the bill with our livestock."

Vejraska said he wants "to have a hound season that actually takes some numbers; to have a pursuit season to train some hounds that actually can catch cats."

Mary Lou Peterson, a member of the Okanogan County Commission, said that, within living memory, county residents have not experienced as many cougar confrontations as occur now. People have lost horses, cattle, sheep, llamas and dogs, she said. One rancher lost 40 head of horses in two years.

"We have got to move beyond the regulation you have now to protect the people of the county," she said.

• It's the same type of behavior that results in TV monitors in convenience stores, and it's all about ethics. And - in this case - it's all about fish. It has prompted the state to close some waters that a lot of folks enjoyed fishing.

The Department of Fish and Wildlife closed the lower 400 feet of the popular Icicle River in Chelan County to protect native Wenatchee stock spring chinook that are listed as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act.

In a perfect world, it wouldn't be necessary.

The old regulations allowed fishing for non-native Carson stock spring chinook in the Icicle from 500 feet below the Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery rack to the mouth of the Icicle. Problem was, some anglers anchored near the mouth and cast into the Wenatchee River, which is closed to fishing, posing a danger to the native fish.

"This illegal activity has increased over the past four years in spite of efforts to educate anglers and enforce the Wenatchee closure," the department said.

So now a portion of the Icicle is closed, too, and you can thank a handful of people who, no doubt, call themselves "sportsmen."

Bob Mottram: 253-597-8640
bob.mottram@mail.tribnet.com