http://tvw.org/ is scheduled to video and broadcast this WDFW Commission meeting.

It will give Saturday folks a view of Friday's testimony.

I'm curious. Who's planning on being at any session, and if you are, which session and what will you speak on?

(the sound of crickets)

Exactly

Crickets, my ass! Melanie and I will be there from 8:15a.m. 'till at least 9:30 for the freshwater rules deal. SCREW those who bitch online and don't have the balls to show up in person! Bob R

Well Bob, I will be happy to shake your hand. Looks like it's gonna be pretty easy to find you and Melanie.....

Where is the outrage....where is the anger....

It is no wonder Unsworth does what he does and fears no repercussions .....

You know, Wolf--there's an old bromide that applies here..."Talk is cheap--but it takes money to buy whiskey..." Way too many talkers on this blog with free advice, but little inclination to pitch in and get involved-- or have the work ethic to realize you get back from an endeavor exactly what you put in it. Sell your boats and move your chair near a window where you can watch the Tribes get their reward for perseverance and the courage of their convictions, while harvesting your rightful share of the resource...Happy Trails!!

I am planning on being there tomorrow (Friday) at 9:45. I cannot make the Saturday meeting as I have a PSA State board meeting to deal with this. We have a meeting with Director Unsworth today. I ran into him yesterday and he seemed confident of the 10 year plan. I told him we have to rescend it. PSA is talking the lead on this.

I am in utter disbelief that this decision was made on our behalf, Washington State fishers, without any WDFW Commission, Governor, or Legislator consent, advice, or review. We cannot let this stand.

Fishingnut,

It is very encouraging that PSA is taking a leadership role in exposing this continued assault on the rights of the citizens of the this state to be fully and rightfully a participant in the management of our resources. At the root of this assault is the Department and Tribal Co-managers insistence that they are immune to public oversight, and can meet and make agreements in closed door meetings at their discretion. It is fully the responsibility of the Commission to keep the Department in check, and it is clearly evident that they have failed in that responsibility.

The citizen sportsmen MUST take responsibility for our destiny. If they continue to wait for others to do the heavy lifting, they can be assured no change other than bad will continue.

Thank you, and the PSA members for picking up the banner of liberty and charging the hill of corruption!

Now, it's up to the masses of sportsmen to follow. I will be at the Commission meeting speaking out about transparency, and I hope to see many, many more!

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

What's the difference between talking here versus talking to WDFW? Making some good headway are we?

Money is, in fact, required to buy whiskey. Sportsmen are unwilling to meaningfully fund any large political and legal challenge to the status quo, and it will require both legal and political funding to make change. Talk, in whatever form, is cheap. WDFW is not going to change voluntarily. Everyone is already pissed at them, the leg has already withheld funding and ordered a review of their incompetence, and they know damn well the tribes aren't going to just play nice all of a sudden.

Folks have no problem spending tens of thousands of dollars for boats, gas, gear, lodging, booze, food and all the rest that we spend money on to fish. It's easy to bitch on the interwebz or talk for 3 minutes on a few Saturday mornings at a commission meeting.

Try to raise even $50,000.00 to fund a lawsuit (which is not enough to fight a big fight) and you'll be met with the same thing you're hearing here: crickets. Unlike the commercial sector or even the environmentalists (who have no financial incentive), businesses are not kicking in serious money to lobby and litigate. There's no organized guide association to meaningfully lobby and fund raise. Anglers, except a select few, donate a few hours here or there and may chip in a couple hundred bucks for a membership here or a raffle there. We're making some relatively minor progress (Columbia and Willapa/GH nets come to mind, and those required, wait for it................litigation and political funding) but aren't drastically improving the overall picture.

The sport fishing industry needs to wake up and play the game how it's designed.

What's the difference?
A drip is easy to ignore, a wall of water is another thing. The media is paying attention, the major sports organizations are taking a very public stand, and the legislators are becoming uncomfortable. Believe me, if 100 guys take up 5 hours of the Commission meeting speaking about the lack of transparency and damaging secret agreements, they will NOT BE ABLE TO IGNORE THIS!

Stay at home if thats where you want to be, but as for me, I'm taking the time to let my voice be heard!

Well presented...now take your message to those who need to hear it most: GO TO THE WEEKEND WDFW sessions, and take with you the many of your cohorts who feel the same. I'll be glad to continue our discussion there. the Commissioners were blindsided by WDFW leadership re: the Comprehensive Ten Year Management Plan--the very same managers who need the Commission's insight, perspectives and approval before such an action can take place. Without transparency, this practice has become the rule, rather than the exception. The established rules are the rules...and enough is enough! if this doesn't make your blood boil...check yourself for a pulse.

I'm not dismissing what you are doing. It is useful and should continue. I'm saying that talk, alone, isn't going to get us there.

Part of the issue is that the overall problem is bigger than WDFW and our local leg. When WDFW said no deal, the feds simply disregarded the law and let the tribes fish anyway. The feds refused to acknowledge a federal nexus for WDFW's permit despite there being literally dozens of potential options. Hell, BIA authorized the tribes to fish. Exactly where in the law is that allowed? That would have been a good opportunity to litigate and snatch some low hanging fruit. But, we have no organization with the funding or ............ how do I put it ........ "fortitude" to start any of those big fights.

I have little confidence that getting the meetings open will resolve any ultimate issue. While very useful, my guess is that the tribes will refuse to participate, the feds will let them fish anyway, WDFW will flounder about incompetently (take that one to the bank!), and we'll all be outraged. Then what?

I agree those meetings need to be opened. What I'm saying is our collective vision is too limited and short sighted. We need to be prepared to litigate and to PLAN on litigating. Get funding together now. Get an organization on board now. Get a plaintiff lined up now. Make a plan of attack now. Have a strategy how to win the war instead of just a one-off battle.

WSU,

I fully agree with you that those are very important and vital steps.

I also hope that someone as motivated and informed as you will take up the cause and begin that organization. A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. We have taken that step, and have put a lot of time, energy and cost into that first step. We totally agree with you that our effort is not the end, but a beginning. We are counting on guys like you to start organizing the next step...

Please, let us know how we can help you get started.

I'll be there Saturday with another contingent with a different topic. Our cause to open the Skagit C&R season is on the one yard line and we want some assurances there will be funding for the federally mandated monitoring that needs to be done.

When we first approached the commissioners nearly six years ago, everyone thought it was a good idea. The department's own science was supportive of a season. There wasn't any evidence to not do it. It was good for the local economy. The Upper Skagit Tribe was in favor of it. And yet, even with all these positives it took the department (with us pleading regularly) nearly four years to assign someone to write the management plan. Nearly a year to write it, and nearly a year for the feds to approve it, if in fact they do.

So, if you are looking for some overnight miracle, you might as well stay home.

If you are committed to the end result then get ready to attend lots of meetings, and with more than just WDFW. What you guys want, will need to become your second job. Get a good lawyer - that's your first step.

I made a last minute decision to go to this meeting this morning. I have no illusions that anything momentous will happen, and even though money is the only thing that will ultimately make a real difference, change starts with a clear, unified message, and enough of us need to deliver that message to make it stick with the commissioners. Then, it gets serious.

I agree that it will take money to make real headway, and for sure, we have plenty of it to kick some serious butt. The trouble is people often won't part with their money without assurance that money will be used to fight for their pet issues, and God knows it's hard to find a handful of us that agree on what those should be. Still, I think we just need a small change of perspective. If each of us put even 50% of what he/she spends on a license aside as a "fight for our fisheries fund" (how's that for alliteration with a purpose?), we'd have a solid litigation fund. It takes a lot of money, but there's a lot of us, which means a little goes a long way.

Of course, the next problem is organizing and administering that fund. Absent any single person we all agree should be our collective voice, practically speaking, our best vehicle is conservation and advocacy groups. CCA and PSA have joined forces on several pressing issues, and that's a great place to start. Give them some of your money (it really doesn't have to be a lot) and see what they can do.

There have been only three people speak this morning to the Commission about transparency at all, and one of those was centered on harvest more than secret meetings.

I certainly hope that the sessions tonight and tomorrow have a better turn out. Maybe nobody really cares that secret meetings are taking away from them. Where is the rage? Are any of you who are always talking about how bad things are, really too busy to come out from behind your computer and make your voice heard?

Bay Wolf:

I was there until about 11, when I realized my parking permission had expired. I was going to register to comment, but it was pretty clear the focus of today's comments was going to be the unfortunate euthanasia of the deer and elk from For Heaven's Sake. That issue is very emotionally charged, and my opinion is that the rest of today's comments, some of which were really well done, are likely to get lost in the shuffle.

Furthermore, after listening to the first part of the agenda discussions, I found my thoughts all pointed back to what I believe is the only thing that will improve or even preserve the fishing we have, which is reducing the impact of open ocean fisheries. An honest assessment of every fish and wildlife issue discussed today (save for the slaughter at the rehab facility) can only lead to the same, ultimate cause: we're killing too many salmon, of every origin, in the open ocean. Think about it. Why don't southern resident orcas have enough food? Why is the healthy population of seals and sea lions having an unsustainable impact on salmon and steelhead populations? Why did the North of Falcon process finally break completely in 2016? Why are our opportunities to fish disappearing, with no real hope for change in sight? Why isn't the tremendous and growing investment we're making in habitat improvements yielding more fish?

The answer is not apathy. The ultimate, honest answer to all these questions, regardless of the myriad other, contributing factors, is that we (by "we," I mean a bunch of people who don't live here calling the shots on salmon seasons) simply aren't allowing enough WASHINGTON salmon to return to WASHINGTON waters. Nothing that happens in Commission or North of Falcon meetings will change that, because none of the participants in those meetings has ANY influence over NOAA, which is ultimately responsible for approving fisheries with ESA components, which includes very nearly all our local saltwater fisheries.

As much as we agree that WDFW and the Tribes are hanging us out to dry, the sad truth is that they are only dividing up the crumbs left over after the perennial ocean slaughter, and that process was destined to break down as soon as there weren't enough fish returning to let everyone fish.

Only the Feds can fix this. That's where all our effort needs to be focused.

All that said, a few takeaways from the meeting (or what I saw):

Unsworth appears to be not long for his job. He is getting blasted (and rightfully so) from all sides, including the commissioners, who were none too pleased with the fact they hadn't had a review of the chinook management plan before WDFW announced it Friday. One gentleman (who's been involved in this stuff forever but whose name escapes me) more or less pointed his finger at Unsworth when he announced to the room that he is pushing legislation (with lots of good momentum) to implement a zero tolerance policy on public employees lying to the public, the Legislature, etc., with the penalty for violation being termination of employment. Sounds reasonable to me....

The way WDFW treated the folks and animals at that rehab facility was clearly out of line and lacking in due process. Honestly, if they treated poachers as harshly, we probably wouldn't have so much poaching. Also, while I hated learning about the decision to euthanize those critters (right or wrong), I was a little disappointed that issue was so much the focus of the public comment period, although I wasn't surprised. I think it's a shame that people get instantly up in arms when cute, fuzzy mammals get mistreated, yet most don't seem to give two $hits that the salmon so iconic to our heritage and so critical to our ecosystems are edging toward extinction. Guess it's harder to hug a cold, slimy fish.... Anyway, we need to get the people running and supporting these wildlife rehab places on our side, because they show up in numbers and make sure they get heard. I really think if more of the non-fishing public understood how extremely we exploit the resource that is salmon, they would be all over demanding change.

There was talk during Unsworth's report about the problem of bears destroying timber. I was extremely tempted to shout something about how the timber companies ought to start locking all the bears out of their leases, selling keys to only a few, each of whom has promised not to do what bears do (de-bark trees). One of the commissioners made a point of clarifying that timber loss due to bears is a bigger problem for small, private timber growers, for whom five acres of trees is a much more significant loss than it is for a big company. (I'd hazard a guess that euthanizing these bears would not be allowed without "demand" from those big companies, but I digress.)

The one comment that really stuck with me, though I'm not sure it's what the speaker most wanted me to remember, came from a gal addressing WDFW when she said that (paraphrasing), whether it's innocent animals at a rehab facility, bears doing what bears do, or whatever else, all WDFW seems interested in doing is killing. Ouch.

Sorry we couldn't stick around after testifying but my ride needed to get back to work. Fortunate in that it gave me an excuse to avoid more of the Heaven's Sake testimony. My take on that whole mess was that the WDFW folks should have removed those animals alive.

Input from the AG's office explained a lot but didn't mollify on the issues of lack of Commission visibility/input given that is their role pursuant to the Initiative creating the Commission in its current configuration. And since it is our Commission they effectively undermined our Commission and marginalized stakeholders.

And no matter whether the Plan puts some parameters around and judicial oversight of the NOF process it does not resolve the need for public visibility of that process - even if that visibiliy is simply live video feed.

Commissioner Carpenter: Thank you for saying what so many of us have been thinking and saying privately!

Larry, your testimony was strong and well received. Although it seems that the travesty at the re-hab facility had the moment, believe me when I say, the Commission heard what you had to say!

My hope is we will hear from more this evening, and even more tomorrow. Honestly, it is frustrating to have such a strong statement made by Commissioner Carpenter be followed by so few stakeholders.

Thank Larry for taking the time, and to the others that spoke out this morning. There is still a opportunity for the rest of you to bring the heat that Larry B did!

I know you are fighting the good fight. Have you ever thought that if these meetings were videotaped we could lose fishing opportunities? The weak position that wdfw negotiates from could be even more constrained.