ODFW Director Colbert Tapes Podcast With Randy Newberg

“Harvest is the smallest thing that affects wildlife. For us, it’s habitat.”

“I think in the next five years coho will be delisted … I really hope Oregon throws a big party.”

“Hatcheries are absolutely vital for opportunity and conservation.”

“We use the data to try and keep fisheries open as much as possible.”

“We have a wolf that is wreaking havoc in an area of tough winter conditions and they’re calving.”

“A lot of credit goes to hunters.”

“As an agency, conservation is job 1.”

Those are some of the soundbites from Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Director Debbie Colbert as she taped a podcast with famed public lands, conservation and hunting advocate Randy Newberg on Saturday afternoon at the Pacific Northwest Sportsmen’s Show in Portland.

Specifically, Colbert was talking about:

• The critical importance of healthy connected habitats – winter and summer range and migratory corridors – for deer and elk;

• Her optimism that Oregon Coast coho will be removed from the Endangered Species Act following decades of work, including voluntary habitat improvements, to recover the species;

• The importance of state and federal fish production, which in part fuels 70 percent of Oregon’s harvest of anadromous species;

• How creel sampling helps squeeze as much angling opportunity out of highly complex fisheries like the Columbia;

• The restricted toolbox for managing chronic wolf depredations in the federally listed two-thirds of the state;

• Pittman-Robertson Act excise tax moneys from hunters and other shooters that helped fund the purchase of the 16,000-plus-acre Minam Wildlife Area from Manulife, creating a Yellowstone-sized block of contiguous public land in Northeast Oregon;

• And what she sees as ODFW’s primary job, for without conserving populations of game, you can’t even begin to talk opportunity or quality hunts in the first place.

I don’t want to steal too much of Newberg’s thunder for when he posts the hour-and-a-half-long interview taped in the Green Theatre of the Expo Center, but as a hunter, angler and conservationist, I heard a lot I liked in Colbert’s words.

Now in her eighth month as ODFW’s first female director, she expressed wide-ranging knowledge of Oregon’s fish and wildlife species and the strongest factors impacting their longterm viability and thus our ability to harvest them; the wild complexity of trying to manage those opportunities in the face of ESA listings, treaty rights and the folding in of new tribal management, and degrading environmental conditions; the successes and less so of focused predator management; and support for hunters and fishermen as not only funders of more than half the agency’s budget but as conservation partners who are providing key data on fisheries, CWD monitoring and more.

That said, it was also pretty darned imperative that Colbert hit all the right notes, what with ODFW this legislative session asking state lawmakers for a license fee increase and $20 million for hatchery investments.

And there were some hot button issues that weren’t addressed – Columbia Basin endorsement funds and barbless hooks on the big river; Army Corps of Engineers’ court-mandated actions at Willamette Valley reservoirs that will probably lead to the end of another kokanee fishery. Host Newberg had reams of questions taken from the public but couldn’t get to all of them in the allotted time.

But overall, it was an interesting Q&A with a great storyteller (Newberg wasn’t too impressed with Portland’s inch of snow or the two-hour wait for an Uber from his hotel to the show before finally hitching a ride with someone) and interviewer, and it should make for a really good podcast when it is posted.

And that’s gonna have to be all the time I have for that as I try to land this next issue before deadline – holy !$#!$, John, that date and time is impossible!!