An Open Letter To The WA Fish & Wildlife Commission On Management Decisions, Science

Dear Washington Fish and Wildlife Commissioners:

You are fond of claiming your decisions arise from science, quibbling over “best available science,” and evading transparency about yours and your allies’ values. Consequently, you split hairs endlessly over process, delay needed actions, interfere with staff’s work, and eventually come to decisions that create unnecessary conflict and anger.

Wildlife management decisions are ultimately about values. Science is valued in wildlife management decision making and hopefully, informs management choices. However, conflating values with science, while common, leads to subjective selection of scientific evidence to support your values, known as confirmation bias. Sadly, there is a tendency to see this in scientific research that starts with a values-based conclusion (e.g., trophy hunting is unethical) and builds a study to prove it. Making scientific arguments to “prove” a belief is not science.

Cain and Mitchell succinctly expressed the problem of confusing science with values in a 2018 US Geological Survey Open-file Report: “All decisions in wildlife management are based on human values, including the value placed on science. Care must be taken, however, when scientific arguments are used to support recommendations based on other values. Science is easily misused on behalf of non-scientific agendas, becoming a seemingly objective but diversionary proxy for the subjective values behind the agendas.”¹

It is far more comfortable to assert that your discussions are about science than to reveal the contentious values that drive your decisions. For the majority, these firmly held beliefs include hunting and all harvest activities are contrary to wildlife conservation,² human killing of carnivores is unethical, human-caused wildlife mortality is inherently evil, poaching is hunting, rural communities refuse to co-exist with wildlife, and conservation can only be achieved through preservation. It is no surprise that you don’t want to be honest and transparent about values that conflict with most other wildlife conservation and management stakeholder groups. The values are, however, apparent through your discussions and actions.

Disputes in the name of science about species abundance and abundance monitoring are common in wildlife values battles. You manifest this conflict by refusing to accept well-proven population measures, such as consistently rejecting harvest trends and related information as valid tools. Recently, you questioned a validated method for Dungeness crab population tracking, which supports both commercial and recreational crab harvests. And appearing despicably racist, you cast doubt on the gray wolf population determination by the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in the 2024 state wolf population measurement.

Another problem with insistence that your decisions are science is your rejection of department expertise. When various research results related to a controversial wildlife management decisions differ, you express distrust of department staff rather than look to their proficiency in analyzing conflicting outcomes. Instead, department staff are bullied for not selecting a study result that supports your values, even when the studies are flawed by poor methodology or scientific biases. 

Your misunderstanding of the role of science heightens other problems with your governance. In addition to lack of transparency, you are only accountable to your allies. Your claim that a scientific result is “decision critical” provides cover to reject others’ perspectives. Endless debate over purportedly objective information obfuscates the real questions before you, leading to exclusion of most wildlife stakeholder communities when you act on a decision.

You clearly believe deeply in your values and perspectives, so much so that you view them as the only way to achieve wildlife conservation. Such strongly held opinions become a trap for believers who can see only their values as the true and correct path. While such certainty in these troubled times is comforting to a community of believers, it leads to non-inclusive decisions that disenfranchise most wildlife conservation and management stakeholders, a prospect that is ultimately detrimental to the conservation you seek to achieve.

Values aren’t right or wrong. Our differences must be respected to fit everyone under the big tent and the urgency of biodiversity decline requires the tent to be filled. Ideally, political positioning would have no role in governance but it’s unrealistic to expect. The destructive tendencies of partisanship can be overcome when decisions aren’t viewed as winning or losing. The best governance decisions strive for fairness and equitability, which almost certainly is a win for wildlife conservation. 

Kim Thorburn
Spokane, WA

^{1. Cain, J.W., 111, and Mitchell, M.S. (2018). Evaluation of key scientific issues in the report, “State of the mountain lion-A call to end trophy hunting of America’s lion”: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2018-1128, 14 p., https://doi.org/10.3133/ofr20181128.}

^{2. Bixby, K. (September 22, 2020). Why hunting isn’t conservation and why it matters. Rewilding Earth. https://rewilding.org/hunting-isnt-conservation/}