Alarmed WA hunters doing the math on wolf program

The Washington Fish & Wildlife Commission meets tomorrow at the Natural Resources Building in Olympia to unveil and review the current version of a proposed wolf recovery program, an effort this state’s big game hunters see as a plan that will ultimately doom their hunting tradition.

Alarmed hunters are weighing in on the Hunting Washington and Hunting-Fishing Northwest forums. There are allegations that the Department of Fish & Wildlife staffers and state advisory group panelists responsible for this plan are “wolf lovers” intent on getting as many of the predators in this state as possible. The controversy was reported in the Wenatchee World and Seattle Times Thursday.

Hunters also understand that wolf advocates will use the courts to perpetuate wolf expansion and prohibit population control through hunting or other means. The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation has just petitioned to intervene in the latest wolf protection lawsuit in Montana.

Perhaps most alarming to hunters, who spend millions of dollars and as many man hours to hunt, enhance and protect deer, elk and other big game populations, is the math. Hunters are already figuring that the wolf population desired by wolf advocates is going to take a heavy toll on this state’s big game herds. They also look at the WDFW as an adversary, not an ally, in what is shaping up as an ugly battle. The state says that the goal is to have 15 breeding pairs of wolves to assure "stateside wolf recovery." What is not being said, say critics, is that a lot more wolves — entire packs — will be roaming around with those breeding pairs, and they all get hungry.

Approximately 300 wolves will kill between 6,700 and 10,000 deer and elk each year, the plan states.—Wenatchee World

Washington hunters have lost faith in the agency that was once the Department of Game, and understood where its money came from. In the 1980s, under former Gov. Booth Gardner, the agency shifted its focus when it became the Department of Fish and Wildlife. Those angler and hunter groups that “went along to get along” at the time are now viewed in retrospect by many veteran outdoorsmen as either gullible idiots or outright traitors.

There is no doubt WA is on the same road as Idaho, and probably will end up even worse. Be sure and go hunting this fall and for the next couple years, this will be the last of the good old days.—‘Bearpaw’

Some of those same hunters are doubting data published on the WDFW website that claims wildlife watching provides a much greater economic benefit, and far more jobs, to this state than hunting and fishing. They point out that no state or federal agency sells “wildlife watching” permits, while the state sells tens of thousands of fishing and hunting licenses, tags, stamps and permits. The state also gets millions of dollars in federal excise tax allocations from the sale of firearms, ammunition, fishing tackle and related products. The data, according to WDFW, comes from many sources, including the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, which is responsible for apportionments from the federal Pittman-Robertson, Dingell-Johnson and Wallop-Breaux excise tax programs.

Annual economic activity in Washington:

Hunting: $313 million — 5,595 jobs

Sport Fishing: $1.1 billion — 14,655 jobs

Wildlife Watching: $1.5 billion — 26,000 jobs

Commercial harvest/wholesale: $1.4 billion — 14,000 jobs

Total $4.5 billion 60,250 jobs

(Data from U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, NOAA Fisheries, NOAA Fisheries, Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies, American Sportfishers Association)

—From the WDFW website

It is almost as though the USFWS does not count all the jobs in gun shops and sporting goods stores as related to hunting, or the gas stations and convenience stores that cater to hunters in Winthrop, Twisp, Cliffdell, Naches, Ellensburg, Randle, Morton, Packwood, Colfax, Colville, Kettle Falls, Newport, Republic and elsewhere. Perhaps the state considers “wildlife watching” to include all the hunters who are forced, because of questionable antler restrictions on elk and deer, to “watch” as good bulls and bucks trot away into the bush because it is not legal to shoot.

One Hunting Washington forum member, a highly-respected retired game biologist, calls the figures “total B.S.”

Activist hunters and anglers have taken to calling the WDFW the “Department of NO Fish and WATCHABLE Wildlife,” due to the management direction the agency appears to have adopted. This proposed wolf plan, they quietly murmur, is just one more significant signal that the agency that once recognized their value and contribution to the state’s economy and the preservation and enhancement of the fish and game resources, now considers them something of a necessary evil; a source of revenue for licenses and tags required to pursue fishing and hunting opportunities that now exist largely on paper.

Well this is going to just wipe out the big game population in Wa. You have to know that the tree hugging enviros have a different adgenda. Once the wolves wipe out the big game they will say there is no need for hunting anymore. Surely WA governor and fish and game doesn't have a back bone to stand up to USFW like Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho did. This is enough to really piss a guy off and ruin his day. Well hopefully the big game pictures of animals taken in the past will remain on here because that's about to change.—‘Skyvalhunter’

Many hunters are quietly convinced that seasons have been adjusted to reduce harvest, antler regulations have been adopted more to discourage hunters than help improve the herds, and now they have the wolf issue coming for their emotional jugular. They are alarmed and they are getting angry.

It's not over, yet. The commission will be meeting again in August after more comment and consideration of this draft plan. The "Wolf Working Group" meets again next week to "review proposed revisions" resulting from this weekend's commission meeting. The wolf group meets at the Kittitas Valley Event Center June 8 and 9, during the daytime — weekday working hours for hunters — but they will not be taking public comment, anyway.

For this state's concerned hunters, it could be a proverbial "summer of discontent."

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