5 Things Pissing Me Off Today

1) Late last month, Robert Lackey, a professor at Oregon State University’s Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, posted a video listing his top 10 reasons why the Northwest’s wild salmon and steelhead stocks have collapsed and the very, very, very long odds that they’ll ever recover to any real degree, despite all the work we are doing.

He essentially argues, given longterm declines driven by 200 years of altering absolutely everything as matters of accepted public policies, an expected tripling of the region’s population by the end of this century and the low likelihood that we residents can – or even want to – collectively change our ways in major ways that benefit fish and habitat, we salmon advocates might as well make due with the new fish species moving in as well as rename one of them, American shad – which needed a mere 130 years to become the most populous sea-going fish in the Columbia – as American salmon and “declare victory.”

That solution by Lackey is admittedly tongue in cheek (as well as an utter nonstarter for most of us), but his top 10 and rationale amount to a very sober echo of his past clear-eyed work on the future of our fish.

“For those involved in salmon policy issues, for sure avoid the pull of pessimism. And equally, dodge the allure of delusional reality. Rather, acknowledge honest, accurate, perhaps unwelcome scientific and policy reality,” he concludes in the video.

(Yeah, I’m a little butthurt because I think he diagnosed me as suffering from “delusional reality” for my June 2018 pitch to rip out the kiddo soccer fields at the Sounders’ practice facility and turn them into Duwamish River side channels to benefit Chinook, coho and steelhead.)

Lackey isn’t some whacko on the fringes. His words were making the rounds among serious Northwest sportfishing leader circles this week. Vetting him with another source, they told me they consider him to be “excellent, if you like deep thinking/objective realist public policy and science perspectives.”

Not gonna lie, I’m 1,000 words into another blog here that will never see the light of day but tries to put some sort of optimistic spin on the future of Northwest salmon/steelhead and fishing through the lens of a home remodeling project and a too-short ladder and some drywall to make the case to set aside the last best basins for wild fish recovery and crank up the hatcheries everywhere else – “After all, what is so important about an adipose fin?” Lackey says, albeit in apparent reference to shad, but possibly 150 years of genetic introgression that means what percentage exactly of “wild” fish are actually wild and not feral hatcheries … and … well, I’m pissed off with myself that my words aren’t working at the moment or something and I can’t close the sale in the post in a more timely manner, so let’s move on with our lives for the time being.

2) Things are pretty hot right now in the Northwest fishing and hunting world, especially on the Washington side and with a certain member of the WDFW citizen oversight panel.

When we get hot under the collar we tend to say things that we probably shouldn’t and to be frank, I’m seeing some language out there – including from folks who should know better – that gives me deep concern, as it does a wise poster on Hunting-Washington:

It’s time to face the reality facing hunting in Washington and across the country.

We need to clean up our collective act as hunters and start demonstrating our value to conservation.

We need to get organized, act and speak with professionalism and integrity, always.

I work with state reps from the 49 other states along with many pro-hunting conservation organizations, authors, and researchers. I can assure you that these things are more important now than ever before. People are watching, reading, and listening. The HSUS and MANY anti-hunting organizations are collecting evidence to use against hunting across the country and in Washington.

I’m not calling anyone out here, just making the point that we need to do better and work tirelessly to keep the perceptions of hunting and hunters in a positive light. This is a long game and we all need to lean in and get involved.

The other thing everyone must understand is that wildlife and natural resource management will never be solely science-based.  It’s nearly 100% political, as we’ve all seen for decades. Understanding state politics is nearly impossible so the only thing we can do in that domain is to ensure that we don’t provide anything to be used against us. Everything we do and say is being watched. Getting angry is a given but keeping our cool, using facts and data to support our arguments, and getting involved is worth every bit of effort.  The future of hunting depends on it.

Thanks for listening…

To be clear, the spring bear issue actually moved us LIGHT YEARS ahead of where we were as an organized force pre-commission vote in early November 2021, but I worry that if we don’t clean up our language, it will just keep ending up in a certain group’s certain Dropbox folder, where they collect what we say on social media to make us look bad.

I am absolutely no paragon, but we should not personally disparage those we disagree with, even if they might be purposefully tweaking us, with such uncomplimentary words.

Literally, the less said, the better, so we’re moving on to Number 3 now.

3) I don’t know who the hell dumped 13 coyote carcasses at a north Olympic Peninsula park/water access site, nor four more in a ditch just outside Walla Walla, but I do know that that’s not where they go.

Whether it’s a local who is pretty damn effective at protecting their chicken coop or a trapper or – please, don’t be the case – resident hunter who had a field day (hurray) and didn’t know what to do with so many carcasses all at once (boo) or someone else, dumping dead wildlife in such prominent places is unethical, dumb and casts a bad light on the necessary control of predators in such an altered state and by extension us.

If Item 2 above doesn’t make it clear that we’re being watched and that could impact our opportunities, hopefully this one will; one incident already made the letters to the editor page and both have reporters sniffing around.

To quote the person who brought this issue to my attention, “Stop being dipsh*ts, you’re going to f*ck it up for the rest of us.”

For starters, public dumping doesn’t respect the animals. Were we not taught anything? Man, dig a hole, return them to the earth, or check your local regulations for other proper ways to dispose of carcasses.

4) Yesterday’s federal relisting of wolves in the western two-thirds of Washington and Oregon by a US District Court judge in Northern California who sided with those who argued USFWS was wrong in declaring packs here and elsewhere in the Lower 48 recovered, despite in all likelihood 400 or more of the furry fangers running around both Northwest states – Mother. Of. God. How long do we need to drag this out for?!?

Seriously.

I couldn’t agree more with Washington Fish and Wildlife Commissioner Kim Thorburn, who today was reported to be “disappointed with the federal ruling. She argues wolves aren’t near extinction, and there are other species facing more dire threats,” according to the Spokane Spokesman-Review.

“It seems to me that these kinds of decisions pour resources into species that don’t need the kind of help,” Thorburn told reporter Eli Francovich, adding, “Wolves have vast amounts (of money) spent on them. Then you look at something like a butterfly or a bumblebee that is so critical to an ecosystem’s survival and it has nothing spent on it.”

But can USFWS also maybe make a better, more court-defensible case to delist wolves in our two states, and keep them that way?

And I also want to reserve some of my wolf ire for politicians to the east of Washington and Oregon whose new wolf killing rules have led Department of Interior Secretary Deborah Haaland to say that the US Fish and Wildlife Service is “evaluating whether a re-listing of the northern Rocky Mountains’ gray wolf population” under ESA is again needed. Thanks for potentially screwing WDFW and ODFW management in the eastern thirds of both states.

5) It’s still early, I’ll come up with something …

Option A) The craptacular winter this has turned out to be …

Option B) All the Actual Work that piled up while I vented …

Option C) The fact I can’t figure out how to connect remotely to my work server so I can grab an image of a snow goose flock so I can burn another couple hours on blogging instead of doing Actual Work, which, by the way, continues to pile up …