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About Capital press. (Salem, OR) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 11, 2019)
6 CapitalPress.com Editorials are written by or approved by members of the Capital Press Editorial Board. Friday, January 11, 2019 All other commentary pieces are the opinions of the authors but not necessarily this newspaper. Opinion Editor & Publisher Managing Editor Joe Beach Carl Sampson opinions@capitalpress.com | CapitalPress.com/opinion Our View Inslee tries end run around legislature Y ou have to hand it to Wash- ington Gov. Jay Inslee. When the legislators reject- ed plans to cap and tax carbon in his state he decided to do an end run around them and told his Depart- ment of Ecology to make up its own plan to save the planet. The only problem: A judge ruled Ecology has no legal authority under the state’s Clean Air Act to regu- late businesses that distribute fos- sil fuels. The department has now appealed that ruling to the much friendlier state Supreme Court, which has demonstrated its own cre- ativity when it comes to promot- ing environmental causes. We recall that a majority of justices ruled that the words “will” and “may” are syn- onyms in Washington and the state Don Jenkins/Capital Press Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has eyes on the White House. Department of Fish and Wildlife can now oversee any construction or maintenance projects near a river, lake or stream. Call it WOTUS, Washington style. With the Supreme Court on his side, Inslee doesn’t really need the Legislature. The irony of Inslee’s cap on car- bon is it won’t save the planet. Or at least he cannot say how it would. Nor can he say exactly how much it will cost Washingtonians. Those are two important ques- tions. Even proponents of a carbon cap would want to know the answers to those and other questions, includ- ing why the governor doesn’t trust the Legislature, which is dominated by his own party, to do this instead of making an end run. It’s easy to see that Inslee has lit- tle interest in Washington state. If he did, he’d explain the reasoning behind the carbon cap and how much it would cost. He’d also order Ecol- ogy to study the plan and provide all of the pertinent information to Wash- Ungulate population must be increased in wolf country Our View T It’s not the farmers’ job to feed the state’s elk F armers and ranchers in Washing- 1,950 elk. They just don’t really know. And the $1.5 million in damages is just ton’s Skagit County have for years an estimate, too. The assessor made the had a problem with elk eating their estimate based on the losses reported by crops and pastures, and destroying fence 77 farmers. and other infrastructure. The state offers compensation, but The county assessor’s offi ce is conduct- the process is so onerous that most peo- ing a yearlong assessment of elk dam- ple who suffer damage don’t bother fi ling age to agriculture. The assessor estimates the exhaustive paperwork necessary to be farmers could claim $1.5 million a year in damages from the ever-increasing herd. reimbursed. In fact, the last claim was fi led The actual number is higher. in 2016. Those who do face a $10,000 That’s a lot of money farmers are pay- limit. ing to feed the state’s elk, particularly That doesn’t always cover it. when they aren’t able to do much to stop This spring the managers of a large the onslaught. blueberry farm in northwest Washington Efforts to increase the number of elk in say elk ate between 90,000 and 100,000 northwest Washington go back more than pounds of blueberries. At 98 cents a a century. In 1912, Skagit County brought pound, that loss blows through the cap by in 46 elk from Yellow- at least $78,000. stone National Park Just about every- Just about everyone to increase the herd. one says the situation Poachers took the says the situation has has gotten out of hand. elk, according to state That’s how the farmers Department of Fish gotten out of hand. and ranchers feel. So and Wildlife records. That’s how the farmers do the wildlife manag- In the late 1940s, ers at Fish and Wild- the state released and ranchers feel. life and the tribes. 22 elk from King and Yakima coun- Fish and Wildlife So do the wildlife ties. They became the issues “kill permits” managers at Fish and allowing landown- foundation of today’s herd. Wildlife and the tribes. ers to shoot one elk The most recent to curb damage. But importation of elk only 16 were shot by came between 2003 landowners with the and 2005, when 98 elk from the Mount St. permits in 2018, according to a Fish and Helens area in southern Washington were Wildlife report. rounded up by the Department of Fish and Farmers aren’t keen about letting hunt- Wildlife and Indian tribes. The animals ers they don’t know on their land. But were herded by helicopter through live- they are open to allowing known hunters stock chutes, loaded on horse trailers and on their land, or to culling more of the elk driven north to Skagit County. herd themselves. The elk have thrived and have made Wildlife managers, though support- their way to private property. ing wider hunting, haven’t endorsed let- Wildlife managers have only a rough ting property owners take a more active estimate of how many elk are in the area. role. That’s a shame. Farmers and ranchers They say it’s 1,593, plus or minus 716. In should be able to do more than just feed other words, the population could be far higher than the state’s population goal of the king’s deer. Don Jenkins/Capital Press fi le TOP PHOTO: Elk gather in a fi eld in eastern Skagit County, Wash. ingtonians for a free and open debate. Then he’d turn the issue over to the Legislature, where it would be addressed as though Washington were a representative democracy. But the word on the street is Ins- lee’s exploring a run for the presi- dency. In preparation for the run, he and his attorney general have made a hobby of suing the federal govern- ment over a variety of issues, includ- ing the administration’s order tight- ening the border. His tenure as Washington’s gov- ernor shows he has at least one sim- ilarity to the current president. He doesn’t believe in — or understand — the legislative process. His will- ingness to go around even mem- bers of his own party shows he has the same shortcomings as the current occupant of the White House. o quote one of the goals of the Washington Wolf Plan: “Maintain healthy and robust ungulate popu- lations in the state that pro- vide abundant prey for wolves and other predators as well as ample harvest opportunities for hunters.” To quote from the objec- tives of the Wolf Plan: “Main- taining robust prey populations will result in three key benefi ts for wolf conservation in Wash- ington: providing wolves with an adequate prey base, supplying hunters and recreational viewers of wildlife with continued oppor- tunities to hunt and observe game and reducing the potential for livestock depredations by pro- viding an alternative to domes- tic animals. Ungulate popula- tions in areas occupied or likely to be occupied by wolves should be managed consistent with game management plans devised for those populations.” I will use as an example a defi ned area, the Kettle Mountain Range North of Sherman Pass to the Canadian border, which is part of Game Management Unit 101. All of the GMUs in Dis- trict 1 and many GMUs state- wide that wolves have not col- onized are following the same downward trend in the prey base. In the last several years the Sher- man, Profanity, OPT and Togo packs have depredated on live- stock and met the lethal removal and pack removal criteria of the Wolf-Livestock Interaction Protocol. What is causing this area to have an abundance of depreda- tions and wolf removals? Some of the Wolf Advisory Group members have blamed the ranch- ers for not conforming to their perceived standards on preven- tive tools contained in the pro- tocol, others have wanted to add to the preventive tools and/or micro manage the protocol. The range riders have found the cat- tle unmanageable due to constant harassment and fear of wolves and everybody has been arguing about tools and their application. The defi ned area in the recent past contained one of the fi n- est mule deer populations in the state along with a vibrant and expanding moose population and an increasing population of white tail deer. Around the turn of the 21st century the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife applied and marketed a new pred- ator management model, which is management of predators at a full carrying capacity based on all the available land-based habitat with no consideration for the needed prey base on that habitat. I would defi ne it as predator/ prey management based on nat- ural fl uctuations. Less than a decade ago along came the wolf into these prey depleted areas with added protein needs. The department’s new model of pred- ator/prey management, or non management, was how mother nature managed prehuman, both predator and prey species were destined to crash when they reached the apex of their oppos- GUEST VIEW Dave Duncan ing sigmoid curves or carrying capacity and given considerable time most species recovered but some went extinct. Present day, this management model is successful only for the predator species when there are other suffi cient protein sources on the landscape like livestock, and pets in people’s backyard. The anecdotal information provided by folks that spend a lot of time in the area say the mule deer population is greatly reduced in the mountain range and the moose are basically gone. Today, data from a collared wolf in the area shows extreme daily movement in search of prey. Applying the Optimum Foraging Theory (the choice of what prey to eat is dependent on abundance of that prey) with the lack of nat- ural prey, livestock becomes the most abundant. That is the primary cause of the four wolf packs to prey depredate on livestock. Under this scenario no legal preven- tive action by the livestock pro- ducer will reduce this confl ict between wolves and his live- stock. We are continually attack- ing the symptom at ever increas- ing cost without thought for the cause. I believe that the next pack to move into this area will fol- low the same livestock depreda- tion pattern. The real solution is the appli- cation of holistic predator/prey management statewide and the overriding management tool should be monitoring the recruit- ment of neonates and to conserve the retention of the females nec- essary to achieve the goals and objectives. Seven years have passed since the Wolf Plan was ratifi ed by the Wildlife Commission. It is quite clear that the goal and the overriding objective of the Wolf Plan as stated upfront have been ignored by the department. This needs to change along with revis- iting the predator/prey model and it needs to happen quickly if we are going to recover our prey base to its habitat carry- ing capacity statewide or its past abundance. It is the department’s mandate to preserve, protect, and perpetu- ate and manage the wildlife ... in a manner that does not impair the resource. Dave Duncan lives on the High Valley Ranch in Ellensburg Wash. He is a rancher, hunter and conservationist and rep- resents Washingtonians for Wild- life Conservation, a consortium of hunter organizations, on the state Wolf Advisory Group. He is also the chair of the Wildlife, Rancher, Sportsmen, ESA com- mittee for Washington Cattle- men’s Association and has been closely involved in wolf conser- vation and management for over a decade.