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Capital Press Editorial Board.
Friday, January 11, 2019
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the opinions of the authors but
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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.