Larry Cassidy: A ‘Life Of Conservation’ Remembered

The passage last week of Larry Cassidy is sparking warm memories of a man and angler who dedicated decades upon decades of his life to working for Northwest fish and wildlife.

Cassidy, whose conservation, professional and personal resume is literally too long to list, was remembered this morning by Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission members Jim Anderson and Kim Thorburn for “always trying to bring people together” as well as “his generosity and sense of service” that left people feeling “very lucky to have crossed paths with him.”

“I hope when I pass away people say things about me like they say about him … It’s superlatives across the board,” added Chair Barbara Baker.

Cassidy served for 12 years on a forerunner of the citizen panel, the Washington Game Commission, including four years as its chair, after being appointed to it by Governor Dan Evans in early 1973. He would go on to serve as a commissioner on the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission, as a U.S. Commissioner during salmon treaty negotiations with Canada, a member of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council for nearly 10 years, and more.

A remembrance in today’s Lewiston Tribune by outdoor reporter Eric Barker about this man of “connections and a cause” shares how Cassidy helped vault salmon, big game and other critters up the ladder via a steelheading trip on the Toutle River and later conversations with powerful Michigan U.S. Rep. John Dingell as the Northwest Power Act was being debated.

“‘Well, Congressman,'” Cassidy told Dingell, writes Barker, “‘if somebody doesn’t make the fish and wildlife equal to the power generation, we are going to lose the fish; there isn’t any question about that. We need to have more emphasis and more effort with regard to saving salmon and steelhead.’”

It was advice that would send a shock through Washington’s political power structure.

“Three weeks later I got a call from Denny Miller, who was the chief of staff for (Washington Senator) Henry Jackson, and he said, ‘Larry, you have screwed up the Northwest Power Act completely,'” Cassidy recalled in a WDFW August 2021 YouTube video headlined “A Life of Conservation.” “I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ He said, ‘Well, you got Dingell to where he’s requiring fish to be equal to power generation and I don’t think that’ll work. I said, ‘Well, I don’t know what’s wrong with that.'”

The act required fish and wildlife mitigations for Columbia hydropower system operations.

“(To) this day, [it] directs some proceeds from power generation at dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers to work to restore fish and wildlife populations impacted by the federal dams,” according to a statement by WDFW Director Kelly Susewind on Cassidy’s passage this morning.

These days hyperpartisanship might be all the rage, but Cassidy is remembered for working above the fray.

“He had no interest in your political party, only in what you could do to help fish and wildlife in the Northwest,” Tom Karier, a fellow Northwest Power and Conservation Council member, told Barker.

Cassidy was also one of the founders of Washington Anglers for Conservation Political Action Committee, which “supports fish- and wildlife-friendly candidates for public office in Washington,” according to WDFW.

Fishing advocate Frank Urabeck recalled his days as director of fishing affairs for the Northwest Marine Trade Association bringing him in contact with Cassidy.

“This included a number of phone calls and even a visit to his plumbing business office in Vancouver.  As a human being, advocate for fish, leader in many capacities, business man and all-around good guy, Larry had no equals as a class act and person that made things happen without the personal conflicts that some of us seem to generate,” Urabeck said.

Two years ago, after discovering WDFW inadvertently erected an outhouse on his property at Snyder Bar on the Shumaker Grade stretch of the Grande Ronde – popular with summer steelhead and smallmouth bass anglers – he and his wife Marilou donated the surrounding 5 acres to the agency.

He was president of the Association of Northwest Steelheaders back in the late 1960s, an era when the organization took on the powerful salmon and tuna canning industry at the mouth of the Columbia and got steelhead changed from a food fish to a game fish in Oregon, part of what made his a “life so significant,” as one longtime personal and professional acquaintance fondly recalled.

“He had a pretty big impact,” they stated.

And it was a lifelong calling.

While Cassidy battled prostrate cancer for the past two and a half decades, in recent years he still had time for the natural world, including focusing attention on the Eurasian milfoil taking over Vancouver Lake, next to his Lake Shore home. He was on the board of directors of Friends of Vancouver Lake, which is working to restore the lake just off the Columbia River.

Late January has been tough on giants of the Northwest fishing world in recent years, taking Frank Moore of the Umpqua last winter. Now it has claimed another.

Frank “Larry” Cassidy Jr. was 83. Rest in peace.