City of Forks files steelhead petition
Posted on Tuesday 13 April @ 10:58:18

Late Friday, the City of Forks’ petition, requesting that WAC 232-12-619 be amended to allow for the retention of wild steelhead, was filed with the Director of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and also the Fish and Wildlife Commission.
The petition was filed by the City of Forks, Mayor Nedra Reed and Dan Leinan as petitioners and had the support of the Forks Chamber of Commerce, the King County Sports Council and the Cowlitz Plan for Restoration-Fish. Other individuals who supported the petition include John Kelly, Bob Reid, Prof. Steve Mathews (Ret.) and Ruby Swagerty.


The petition was filed under the Washington Administrative Procedures Act. It requests the department and the commission to consider amending the sports fishing rules for 2004-05, as well as any rule associated with the 2005-06 rule period, to reverse the recently adopted moratorium on the retention of wild steelhead. The moratorium was adopted on 6 Feb 2004 as part of the Wildlife Commission’s revision to the state’s sport fishing rules. Those rules were published in the state register on 7 April 2004 and will take effect on 1 May 2004. The winter wild steelhead season ends in late April for the rivers in and about Forks.
We informed the commission and the department that if the moratorium was not rescinded that we would utilize the means available to us to have it rescinded, noted Mayor Reed. We met with members of the department and the commission in early March, and while the start date of the moratorium was modified, the moratorium itself was not repealed. As a result, we have filed a petition asking that the harvest rules for wild steelhead be amended to read as they did in 2003-2004. We have six months before the start of the next winter wild steelhead season – so now is the time to truly assess the issue of wild steelhead management on the Olympic Peninsula.
Our petition addresses the issue of whether or not it can be demonstrated that the adopted rule was substantially different from that which was proposed in the written notice, continued Reed. I believe that we clearly demonstrated that difference in the petition we submitted on Friday.
Under the Washington Administrative Procedures Act, the commission has sixty days to respond to the city’s petition. As to next steps, we must wait for a determination of the department and/or the commission as to whether or not the proposal we put forward will be subject to rule making, Reed said. If our petition is denied, we may end up in the court room. My hope, however, is that the commission and the department will decide to open the issue of wild steelhead retention to a thorough public rule making process. We now just have to wait and see.

http://www.forksforum.com/article.php?si...cd0524278955c88